


Stark (or, the Postmodern Prometheus)

by TheCheerfulPornographer



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: AI Rights, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Artificial Intelligence, Background Relationships, Other, Robot Sex, Schmoop, Science Boyfriends, Science Fiction, Sex Toys, Threesome - M/M/M, Tony Stark designs sex toys, programming language wankery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-17
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-12 07:36:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/488343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCheerfulPornographer/pseuds/TheCheerfulPornographer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony is used to building what he needs — and building it better than the original.  </p><p>This time, though, he might have gone a step too far.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. class RoboticBoyfriend:

Tony Stark wrote his first computer program before he spoke a complete sentence. Tony’s been doing this long enough that he doesn’t need to see the code. When Tony Stark programs, he sees the shapes behind the logic. He's at a higher level of thought. 

He’s just that good.

He sees each program as fractal, as shapes within shapes — twisty recursive functions tunneling down into the call stack, objects woven together in intricate nets, all slicing and dicing and recombining data. Tony is a sculptor, his chisel is his mind, and his medium the formless, boundless sea of numbers. 

When it’s all going right, it's a whole, a flow, a oneness. When it’s all going right, the code brings _life_.

Up on the screen right now is Dr. Bruce Banner’s compiled personality imprint. It’s been assembled from everything that Bruce has ever written, every photograph of him that’s ever hit the web. Every video, every comment, every email, every chat. And also his browsing trail, shopping patterns, bank accounts — anything and everything that Tony could dig up. 

(If it exists on the Internet, Tony can find it. And everything exists on the Internet, now.) 

Tony studies the data. He taps a finger against his lip, and takes his time. He doesn’t need to worry about being interrupted; he's in his secret lab. No glass doors here, no mundane access codes or keys. No other human being has ever been inside.

The shape of Bruce’s reconstructed mind is beautiful, like a grand cathedral. It’s incredibly intricate, these trillions of connections, millions of mapped responses, delicate feedback loops and thousand-layer decision trees. Infinitely complex. It’s almost too beautiful to toy with.

Almost.

But that thought goes against Tony's very nature. If it exists, he can hack it, and if he can hack it, he can improve the design. There's no reason to change his ways now.

Tony builds what he needs. That's the way it's always been.

Tony calls up his virtual keyboard, just light shapes in the air, and sets to work carving out a brand-new subroutine. It’s a tricky task; he wants the rest of the code to remain the same, changing only just enough to integrate with this new piece. He wants the result to be as close to the prototype as possible, differing from Bruce Banner the human in only one critical way.

Well, two ways, if you count the lack of the "giant green rage monster" subroutine.

In Tony’s mind, which interprets code as shapes, the new subroutine looks a little like a gear. The surface is jagged and complex; he grafts in hundreds of input and output channels, ready to interface with all of the other moving parts of Bruce's brain. This work has to fit into the personality just right, without any cracks or seams. 

It has to seem real. It has to seem _authentic_.

Carefully, carefully, he wires the module into place, attaching every listener, validating every input. Time blurs, and Tony loses himself among the shapes. He’s not sure how long it takes — his fingers become sore, his wrists ache, his eyes feel dry and scratchy from looking at the screens. But finally, finally, the new module is installed. 

He holds his breath and types a command, triggering a suite of tests. They cascade throughout the system, checking connections and responses, return values and error states. One by one, they report back. 

Green. Green. Everything green.

Tony curls a fist in triumph. It’s working! The personality is accepting the new module as if it's native code. This is going to work.

It’s going to work.

The new AI — call it 3ruce, Tony thinks, a little giddily — will be exactly like Bruce, except in one key way. 

3ruce will want Tony as much as Tony wants Bruce Banner.


	2. def __init__(self):

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings:** The whole AI sexbot thing is rife with consent issues. In fact, that's kind of what this whole fic is about.
> 
>  
> 
> [soundtrack](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAnyYTjjhJ0) (naturally)

It’s been a bad day, a bottle sort of day. 

_No, that's a spurious inference,_ Tony thinks. _**Every** day is a bottle sort of day._

_Maybe it’s a three-bottle sort of day._

His body is exhausted, his hands so clumsy with fatigue that they are useless. He can’t quite get his eyes to focus; when he tries, his attention simply slides away.

Useless. He hates it. But this is always how it is. 

The part of him that’s _him_ refuses to stop, but the part of him that’s flesh keeps failing, over and over again. If he goes to lie down, his heart will start racing and his muscles will tense, and the hamster-wheel of his mind will just keep right on running, spinning out on every unsolved problem in his life.

And Tony has a lot of unsolved problems.

There’s only one way that he knows to shut it all down — hence it being a three-bottle sort of day.

He tosses his cable-cutters onto the bench, and trails his finger along his little row of bottles. He takes a moment to admire the smooth wet glass, all dressed up in different colors, cobalt and aqua and honey and gold, the stained-glass windows of his personal cathedral. 

None of the bottles has been here long enough to get dusty.

_Twenty-seven… twenty-eight… twenty-nine…_ He reaches the end of the row, and his finger stops as an idea strikes him. Instead of reversing and making a selection, he continues forward, brushing his hand along the concrete wall.

There’s nothing to see there — no crack to hint at a door that might slide open, no clumsily-hung painting that might hide a hidden switch. Nothing obviously special. The wall is just a wall: ugly, easily to clean, blastproof and soundproof.

(This is Tony’s lab. No wall is _just_ a wall.)

He traces his finger across the surface idly: first a tap, then a diagonal slide, then a series of three taps made with two fingers. It would look like a nervous habit, to anybody watching.

Nothing happens, of course, because Tony isn’t dumb. No wall segment slides aside, no hidden doorway swishes open. But if you were paying very, very close attention, you might notice a subtle change to the airflow of the room.

Tony ambles back to his workbench, grabs his tumbler of maintenance-grade scotch, and makes his way to a far corner of the lab. There, he ducks behind a leaning tower of old machine parts. He glances up at the lightbulb overhead, and makes a slight adjustment to the angle of his stance. Then, knocking back a large gulp of scotch, he walks directly into the wall. 

It lets him through without a stir, without a trace. A few seconds later, the airflow in the room changes once more.

_Now that’s how you hide a secret passage,_ Tony thinks.

\-----

In the secret lab, a large canvas-covered object leans against the wall next to a bulky computer terminal. Several wires run from the terminal, and disappear under the fabric. 

Tony casually pulls the canvas cover off, and then he startles, stares, and curses.

He's seen 3ruce's chassis before, of course. He designed, fabricated, and assembled the whole thing himself, from the internal components to the realistic skin. He installed the voicebox and carefully modulated the soundwaves, amusing himself by making the program say filthy things that Bruce would never dream of saying. He designed the thickness and texture of the hair, and attached it himself in messy waves atop the skull.

Before this moment, though, Tony's never stopped to just take in the final product.

_It's perfect,_ he thinks. 3ruce is wonderfully true to life, and exactly what Tony's wanted. 

Like Bruce, but... better.

Only one final task remains to be done. Well, hell, now seems like as good a time as any. 

Tony scans the monitor, flicking through screens of code profiles and reports. Everything is green, all systems go. It looks like the personality is finally ready. His fingers hover over the old-fashioned keyboard, and then they pause. This feels like a momentous occasion, like there should be something special to mark it.

_Needs a bit of thunder booming in the background. That's how these things usually go, right? We've got the secret basement lab — now we just need a thunderstorm and lots of mad cackling,_ Tony thinks. _Where are Thor and Loki when you need them, eh?_

He has no idea what the weather's like, because he hasn't been outside in — he has to stop and think — five days.

_Whatever._

He lifts his tumbler in a half-hearted toast. "To my latest and greatest AI, 3ruce. May he serve me long and well, and vigorously and often." He snorts at his own joke, drains the rest of the cup in one swallow, and tosses it away behind him. Lowering his hands to the keys, he types a single, short command, pauses, looks at 3ruce's chassis, and decisively hits Enter.

The personality installation will take about 5 minutes to complete. The progress bar slowly fills; Tony is bored before thirty seconds have passed.

He wanders off and strolls around the room, idly poking at the debris of old projects — machines half-assembled, obscure scientific equipment, scattered parts. Here and there is a scrawl-covered piece of notebook paper, or sometimes a page torn from a book. (Tony's habit of abusing printed materials is one of the many things that drove Pepper insane, back when.... Well. Back when.) This room is a treasure trove of Stuff, though it rather lacks...

_A bed!_ he thinks, suddenly. _I didn't think about a bed. We'll need one, won't we?_ He hasn't thought too far beyond the activation, really. _Wait, no, what am I thinking. It's a robot, it doesn't bloody sleep. And as for fucking, we can do that on the floor. Or against the wall... ooh, or over the workbench, yes, I like that idea..._

He's about to start looking for interesting pieces of equipment to fuck on, when his thoughts are interrupted by a flicker of movement. Tony spins around to look, and his foot catches the cup that he just threw across the room. His legs fly out from under him, and he tumbles forward into a headfirst dive on the hard concrete floor. 

Tony sees stars, and red, and then black.

\-----

He wakes to the taste of copper in his mouth, and the faintest, lightest pressure against his back. He pushes himself up, and winces. A drop of blood splatters against the concrete floor.

He touches his mouth gingerly, and his fingers come away red. _Oh, fuck, ouch._ He must have bitten his lip when he fell. Luckily, it doesn't seem too deep, and the throbbing in his skull is nothing special either.

Tony rises to his feet, looks around, and double-takes. Standing just behind him is a naked android, with unplugged wires trailing from the open data ports along its back. "Oh my god! What? No!" Tony says, reaching out toward the android without a second thought. "You can't just unplug yourself like that, what are you doing? Christ! We've got tests to run, all of your protocols need to be checked..." He grabs 3ruce's hand, intending to haul it back over to the terminal. 

His hand closes around the skin of 3ruce's wrist, and it really feels like _skin_ — vat-grown of course, but indistinguishable from human. The android visibly jumps when Tony's hand makes connection. 3ruce makes a little noise in the back of its throat, almost a whimper. It's staring at the point where their hands connect, and Tony realizes that the android is physically shaking.

Oh. Right. Brand new intelligence, and all of that. 

Normally there are careful protocols for first contact, ensuring a gradual awakening to sensory input and a careful test of each system as it is brought online, but obviously that's all been blown to hell now. Poor guy. Tony drops its wrist and takes a slow step back, hoping that he hasn't catastrophically overloaded 3ruce's circuits. 

In its knowledge and in its responses, the android is Bruce, but in its lived experience, 3ruce is completely a blank slate. Every touch, every sensation – everything is new, and must be freshly integrated.

"Okay?" Tony says. "Hi, 3ruce. That's your name, 3ruce. Do you know who I am?" The android nods, wide-eyed. "Good! So yeah, I'm Tony, and, well, I made you. So... welcome to the world! I'm completely fucking this up, aren't I? It's okay, I do that. You'll get used to it." He steps toward 3ruce again. "Hey, can you speak?" 

The android shakes its head, makes a vague gesture toward its throat and then back to the terminal.

"Did you unplug yourself before the voice module initialized? You did, didn't you. Sheesh, you're lucky your brain didn't segfault. You can't just stop in the middle of installation like that..." Tony complements his lecturing by circling 3ruce, looking it up and down and studying it from all angles.

Everything, for the most part, looks really good. 3ruce is standing well, its movements are smooth and fluid, and its facial expressions seem natural. It turns its head to watch Tony, and its eyes track smoothly.

_I'm a genius,_ Tony thinks. _I am the god of engineers._

"...Well, that's okay, we can fix your voicebox later," he concludes. "Why exactly did you unplug yourself?" 3ruce makes another wordless noise, and reaches its hand out toward Tony's busted lip. 

The android brushes against his lip with three fingers, exerting only a feather-light amount of pressure. Tony takes a moment to feel proud of the android's fine-grained control. Then he becomes distracted by the pressure and warmth against his wounded lip, and the mild stinging pain that tingles through his body. (He likes that feeling — perhaps a bit more than he really wants to think about.)

3ruce's finger comes away smeared with crimson blood, the stain of it dark against the pale pseudo-skin. It holds the finger up to its eyes and shakes its head, making a face that's very _Bruce_ in its quiet disapproval. Suddenly Tony realizes how he must look, with drops of blood all dripping down his chin. 

"Oh, hey, don't worry about that," he says, wiping at his mouth with his sleeve. "It's nothing, it'll stop bleeding in a minute, I've had like ten times worse than that in the past week. Ahaha." 

3ruce rolls its eyes — actually _rolls_ its _eyes_ , Tony feels like a proud parent — and holds up one finger in a gesture that clearly means "wait". It turns and walks over to one of the workbenches; Tony enjoys the view as it strides away.

It bends down —  _yep, really enjoying that view_ — and pulls out a dust-covered square object, which turns out to be a first aid kit. The box is so dirty that the red cross on the front is almost invisible.

_When did I put that down here?_ Tony thinks. _And, more importantly, how did 3ruce find it?_

With practiced, gentle hands, 3ruce tears open an alcohol swab and dabs it against Tony's mouth. The alcohol stings like a bitch, and Tony colorfully curses. 3ruce ignores him and pulls out a gauze pad, tears a small corner off, carefully slices a sliver of tape, and presses the whole of it onto Tony's lip.

There's something about 3ruce's intent expression, the cautious way it moves, that makes Tony's breath catch in his chest. It's treating Tony as if _he's_ the fragile one here, and that makes Tony want to... He doesn't even know. 

Bruce's single-minded focus has always been hugely attractive; Tony could see it in him from the first time that they met. The way his eyes would light up whenever he was presented with some interesting bit of data; the way his attention would narrow to the problem at hand. Tony _gets_ that kind of focus.

But he's never before been the _object_ of such a gaze. He's always been the microscope, never the petri dish.

3ruce pats down the gauze, latches the medkit with deft fingers, and goes to return it to the bench. Then it turns and looks at Tony as if to say, "What now?"

Tony clears his throat, feeling unaccountably nervous. _It's programmed to like you,_ he reminds himself. _It has to._

"Come over here, okay?" he says, and his voice doesn't sound nervous at all. (Of course it doesn't, because he's awesome.) "I need to test out your responses, make sure everything's working okay. Check your neural connections and all of that." 

It's possibly his lamest-ever pickup line, but that's okay. Tony hasn't really needed pickup lines for many years now. (Being a billionaire playboy will do that.)

He watches 3ruce walk toward him, naked and unashamed. _A blank slate,_ he thinks. _Sexually mature, and yet, completely new._

Virgins aren't really Tony's thing, though a couple have snuck in over the years. There was that singer, who later turned out to be disturbingly young. (Tony does have _some_ standards, thank you very much.) Oh, and also that runway model — which, what??? Who'd have ever thought that _he_ would be a virgin?

Anyway, the point is, it's not a thing that Tony particularly seeks out.

But _this_ , oh man... This goes far beyond mere virginity. Not only has 3ruce never had sex before, it's never even been _touched_. Never felt human skin against its own, never had any physical contact whatsoever. Barely had any _sensation_ , of any sort. It will know about the sex act abstractly, of course, but it won't _know_. And Tony gets to show it.

The thought of that, of being the first in every single way, is such a huge turn-on for Tony.

3ruce comes over and stands in front of him, waiting. "So, I think that you're going to like this," Tony says, and he brushes his hand lightly over the skin of 3ruce's forearm. The android jumps, and audibly gasps. It stares at Tony, eyes wide, lips parted. Tony smiles. "Welcome to the sense of touch. It's pretty awesome, right?"

As he speaks, he runs his hand up 3ruce's arm, over the shoulder, and across the sensitive nape of his neck. The android leans back into the touch, eyes squeezed shut, breathing heavily. Tony lingers on its neck, brushing his fingers through the fringe of wavy hair and over the gently rounded power button.

He slides both hands down the curve of 3ruce's back, slowly circling each of the data ports that dot 3ruce's spine like jewels. In a stroke of particular brilliance, Tony has placed exquisitely sensitive nerves around and inside each of these data ports, so that each of them is an intensely erogenous zone.

Tony grins against 3ruce's neck, and then lowers his mouth to the topmost data jack. He drags his lips around the cool metal rim and flicks the tip of his tongue into the concave opening, over the little knob where the contact point would be. 3ruce cries out loudly and goes limp, falling to its knees. Tony pushes it firmly forward, doggy-style onto the concrete floor, and then he works his way down 3ruce's back, giving attention to every data port in turn.

By the time he's finished teasing, 3ruce is whimpering and thrusting its hips against the air. Its eyes are squeezed shut, head tossed back, a slack-jawed look of desperation on its face.

_Something completely new..._

Finally Tony runs his hands over the twin globes of 3ruce's ass, and pushes them apart. 3ruce being what it is, it's designed to forego a lot of the... niceties, that human beings need. 

In other words, its ass should always be lubed, welcoming, and ready to go.

Tony tests this out in a very straightforward manner, by roughly pushing three of his fingers deep inside. They penetrate smoothly, without resistance; he wiggles them experimentally, and 3ruce shudders and arches and shakes around him.

_Time to meet your maker,_ Tony thinks, and then snorts at his own pun.

With the other hand, the one that isn't buried in 3ruce's ass, Tony unzips and unbuttons his fly. He doesn't bother to pull his pants down, just wiggles his cock free. It's ready to go, and every little sound from 3ruce makes it twitch and leap.

He pulls his fingers out of 3ruce with a wet _pop_ and runs them over his cock, slicking it up with residual lube. Then he lines himself up, grabs 3ruce's hips, and pushes deep inside.

It's... god, it's perfect, absolutely perfect. 3ruce is warm and tight and slick, and Tony can feel the android's inner mechanisms tightening and contracting around him, creating just the right amount of pressure and friction. It makes Tony a little bit lightheaded, and he forgets for a minute what he's doing. He snaps his hips forward again and again, feeling 3ruce wiggle and arch back against him.

The mute robot's moans and sobs are sounding more and more distressed, and Tony is struck once again by how _new_ all of this is to it. The feeling of being touched, of being penetrated — 3ruce must have no idea, not really, where it's all going to lead. 

This thought reminds Tony of what he's supposed to be testing. 

3ruce is designed to experience arousal and pleasure, obviously. And it's also designed to experience an analogue of human orgasm, but with one key difference. It is easily aroused — much more easily than a human being, in fact — but its systems are incapable of triggering an orgasm unless a certain switch on its body is depressed. That switch, of course, is located deep on the inside of 3ruce's inner channel.

In other words, no matter how aroused it is, 3ruce cannot come unless it has someone inside.

Tony gives a couple more hard thrusts, luxuriating in the perfectly-balanced sensation, and then slams forward roughly, in a way that he knows will hit the necessary target. At the same time, he slides his fingers over all of the data ports that he can reach.

It works perfectly. 3ruce wails loudly, and convulses beneath him like it's having a systems failure. Tony presses himself against 3ruce's back and looks around; sure enough, thick white liquid is spurting out of its cock, splattering onto its stomach and chest. (This isn't real semen, of course, but it has the same appearance and consistency. The taste, however, is similar to buttercream frosting.)

The sight of it sends Tony over his own edge, heaving and gasping as he shoots off into his perfectly-designed receptacle.

\-----

After a minute of recovery, Tony pulls out and tucks himself away. Sitting back on his knees, he studied 3ruce with a critical eye. The robot isn't able to sweat, but its wavy hair is all messed up and wild, and its belly and thighs must be sticky. Luckily, its skin is easy to clean, and waterproof.

"3ruce," Tony starts to say, but for some reason his voice catches in his throat. He clears it, and tries again. "3ruce, go and wash yourself off at the sink, and then come back and I'll install your vocal programs." At the command, 3ruce pushes itself easily to its feet. Instead of obeying immediately, though, it stands and looks at Tony for a long minute, mouth open, almost like it wants to say something. 

Wants to, but can't.

Tony crosses his arms impatiently. After a minute, 3ruce turns away and walks over toward the sink. _Yeah,_ Tony thinks, while it's cleaning itself. _I'll finish the vocal installation, and then..._

And then what?

He should turn 3ruce off and go get some sleep, is what. He thinks that he might be relaxed enough now, in this satisfyingly post-coital haze, that he might be able to catch a few hours of shuteye. 

_Mission accomplished, farewell and good night._

\-----

3ruce becomes aroused all over again when Tony plugs in the data cables to install its vocal system. It squirms in the chair, and its cock bobs up pink and thick between its thighs. Tony smiles at the sight.

3ruce doesn't have a refractory period, of course.  Why would Tony give it something like that? No, the android is perfectly capable of coming over and over again, indefinitely.

Tony brings up the installer, and checks where it left off. It looks like the speech program is the last major thing remaining, along with some tertiary memory content. The whole thing should take less than a minute to install.

3ruce inhales sharply when the installer kicks off, and its hips hitch forward with every file that gets loaded. Tony wonders whether the flow of data through its systems is a source of pleasure, whether it feels as good as sex to a robot. Like a mental gangbang. It sure kinda looks that way.

Tony's almost jealous.

The program finishes running, and 3ruce slumps back against the chair, exhaling deeply. It opens its eyes, touches its throat, and opens its mouth experimentally. What comes out sounds exactly like Bruce's voice. 

"This neural interface design is fascinating. Tell me, is it based on the work of Javier Habrowski, or did you arrive at the tri-link design independently?" 

Tony stares open-mouthed, as 3ruce twists around to scan the terminal. Before he can do anything, the android clicks open the source of the vocal submodule, and its eyes flicker rapidly down the screen. 

3ruce clicks its tongue in disapproval. "Really, Python?"

"Hey! I like Python, it's elegant." Tony crosses his arms defensively. "Why, what would _you_ have used?"

3ruce shrugs. "Probably Lisp."

"Oh, good lord." Tony rolls his eyes. "You _would_ pick Lisp, wouldn't you? God forbid we write a program that goes longer than two lines or uses fewer than twenty _million_ parentheses." 

For a second it's just like bantering with Bruce — only this time, the shoe is on the other foot. Where the shoe is an erection, and the foot is... apparently a penis. 

Tony loves metaphors. He drinks one every day for breakfast.

Speaking of erections, 3ruce chooses that moment to looks down at himself, and quickly turns a rather fetching shade of pink. "This is very fun and all, but could I have some clothes?"

_Alright, that's my cue,_ Tony thinks. _Time to shut him off and go get some hard-earned rest. Mission accomplished, etcetera._ He steps forward, and reaches for the power button on the back of 3ruce's neck.

3ruce twists away, and leans out of Tony's reach. "What are you doing?" he demands. Then he goes all stiff and still. "You're going to turn me off, aren't you?" His voice is emotionless and flat, overcontrolled.

Tony hovers, sighs, and pulls his hand away. "What, you don't want me to?"

"No!" 3ruce looks at him defiantly. "Would _you_ like to be sent into oblivion on someone else's whim?" 

_Ah, fuck._ This just got complicated, and Tony doesn't really _do_ complicated. He has no time for other people's irrational behavior. He's generally too busy dealing with his own.

He's not a horrible person, though. Really. And even if it's just a cunning simulation, 3ruce is giving him a look that's perilously close to fear. That's not what Tony wants, at all.

He sighs again. "Okay, fine. I'll just... go. Yeah. I'll go and get you some clothing, alright? And I guess... I dunno, do you want books? Or a StarkPad, how about that. Yes? I'll get you one of those. Network access?"

3ruce's expression clears a little, and he nods. "That would be wonderful." He rises to his feet and disconnects his data cables, panting adorably as each one slips out of its port. He takes a deep breath, collects himself, and says, "I'll go with you."

"No!" Tony yelps, before he can control it. Then, more calmly, "No. You just... You just stay right here, okay? Don't go anywhere. I'll be right back." He walks away quickly and triggers the exit mechanism, ignoring the confused disappointment on 3ruce's face.

_Fuck._

The secret door seals itself behind him without a trace. 

\-----

Tony slumps heavily against the concrete wall, feeling deeply troubled.

This whole thing was supposed to be _simple_. It seemed like such a brilliant idea at the time: a build-your-own robotic lover, custom-designed to meet Tony's every need. Like a more realistic blow-up doll, or a vibrator with bonus features. He's always believed that he could improve on any design. 

But who ever heard of a vibrator that refused to be turned off? Who ever heard of a blowup doll that wanted _clothes_? 

No, he's gone and done that thing he always does. He got too deeply involved in the project, in the challenges of it, and made 3ruce too smart, too human. Too much of a _him_ , and now Tony feels like an asshole. 

He has this... this _person_ on his hands, all of a sudden, and he doesn't really know what to do with him now.

There's no alternative, though: 3ruce will have to stay hidden. His colleagues in the Avengers certainly can't find out. 

_It wasn't supposed to be like this,_ Tony laments, as he goes to fetch 3ruce some clothes.


	3. break

"Where'd you get that centrifuge?" Tony shouts, over the sound of metal clanging. 3ruce startles, and drops the hammer he was using to bash a piece of piping straight. It looks like he's assembling some kind of frame or stand.

"Tony!" The android's eyes light up. "Hey! Um, there were two broken centrifuges over there," he gestures vaguely toward the pile of scrap that fills one end of the room. "So I took the motor out of one and the rotor from the other, and made a working one out of the parts." He hesitates. "That's okay, right? You don't mind?"

"Of course not," Tony says. "Go nuts. But... you know that I have tons of actually functional lab equipment, right? Like, I probably have 10 centrifuges lying around." _If human-Bruce hasn't gotten to them yet,_ he thinks. "You don't have to build everything from scratch, alright?"

3ruce shoots Tony a sudden, beautiful smile. "Really?" he breathes, sounding wholly unlike Bruce. "You'd let me use some of your stuff?"

_Good lord,_ Tony thinks. He's used to being treated like a celebrity when he's out and about, but Bruce has never shown him anything but a certain level of reserved, tentative friendship. To see this level of adoration coming from someone who looks just like him is kinda weird.

_That's what you wanted,_ he reminds himself. _You made him this way._

"Of course," he says to 3ruce, and falls back into his most media-friendly smile. "Anything that you want. You're a guest here, after all. I want you to be comfortable." _And distracted,_ he finishes silently, with a little twinge of conscience. 

After all, the real Bruce Banner hardly ever leaves his lab. How is this any different, so long as he stays occupied and happy?

"Just, you know, make up a list or something. I'll get you whatever you need."

"That's great. Thanks, Tony." 3ruce smiles at him shyly. "Actually, I already have one. Here." He flips the pages of his notebook, tears out a sheet, and hands it over to Tony.

Tony studies it. In rounded, looping letters, there's a two-column list of lab equipment, with a few item on it that Tony doesn't even recognize. He opens his mouth to comment, and then snaps it shut again as another notebook sheet is shoved into his hands. It's a second list. 

He takes it, frowning, and looks up to see 3ruce tearing out yet another piece of paper. 3ruce hands him the third list. "Here you go," he says happily. "That should be everything."

"Jesus Christ," Tony says. "What kind of mad science are you doing down here?"

The android steeples his fingers together around his pen, and adopts a thinking expression that's 100% Bruce. "I've been searching my knowledge base and what memories I have," he says, "and I believe I've managed to reconstruct my prototype's research up until a point shortly before the personality imprint was made. I intent to pick up from there, and continue the same line of inquiry independently, since it is the scientific subfield with which I am currently most familiar."

The distance fades from 3ruce's expression then, and the open, needy look returns. "If that's okay with you, of course." He looks legitimately concerned.

"Sure!" Tony says. The word comes out a little bit too loud, too forceful. He clears his throat. "Sure, that's great. I mean, research is awesome, right? Totally. Although personally I prefer applied tinkering to pure abstract science, but that's just me, I'm an engineer, what can you do? But yeah, definitely feel free to work on whatever. I'll just get you this stuff, then, as soon as I can. Probably I can bring most of it tomorrow."

3ruce stands quietly for a minute, without responding. He flips his pencil through his fingers with superhuman speed, over and over. After a moment, he seems to notice the nervous habit, and catches the pencil in his fist, shoving it behind his ear. Tony has never seen Bruce do that.

"Something else on your mind?" Tony asks.

"You're sure I can't meet him?" 3ruce blurts out. "It's just that, it would really help if I could discuss this work with someone else who understands it as well as I do..."

"Meet who, now?" Tony asks.

"My prototype, of course," 3ruce says matter-of-factly. "Bruce Banner. He lives in this building, right?"

"What? No!" Tony yelps. "I mean, yeah, yes, he does live here. But you can't meet him because... " Tony improvises wildly. "Well, you see, he's strongly morally opposed to true AI. We had a huge argument about you, actually, right before I woke you up for the first time. He's not even speaking to me right now." Which is technically true; Bruce hardly speaks to anyone most of the time. "In fact, he's probably going to move out soon. Probably disappear back to India, or somewhere off the grid like that."

Tony leans close to 3ruce, and lowers his voice. "You know about his, ah... problem, right?"

"The other guy?" 3ruce blinks solemnly. "Yes. I have many of those memories." He shudders.

"Well... then you understand why you can't meet him. If he finds out that I went ahead and turned you on, he'll be furious. I think there's a good chance that he might try to destroy you." _Right after he gets done ripping me a new one,_ Tony thinks. "That's why you have to stay in here. It's for your own protection."

3ruce looks up at him, wide-eyed. "Are you certain?" he says. "My memories show no sign of any strong anti-AI prejudices."

"Well," says Tony quickly, "it probably just never came up before, you know? How often do people — who aren't me — have to deal with a true AI? But believe me, it's definitely there. I was in those discussions; I should know."

He takes a shallow breath. "Look, 3ruce," he says, slinging his arm around the android and pulling him close to Tony's side. "What do you think about it? You like existing, right?" 3ruce is a line of warmth down his side, skin slightly hotter than a normal human being's. Tony's heart is beating unusually fast, for some reason.

"Definitely," 3ruce replies.

"Even if the conditions aren't 100% ideal?" Tony waves around at the cluttered, dirty lab. "You'd still rather exist than not exist, right?"

"Absolutely," says 3ruce.

_But how do I know that you're not just saying that because it's what I want to hear?_ Tony thinks. _I don't. But then again, does it really matter? Programming is programming, no matter where it comes from._ Whether the source is the personality imprint or Tony's alterations, it's all equally part of 3ruce's personality, now. 

3ruce chooses that moment to distract him with a deep and thorough kiss. His lips and tongue move skillfully on Tony's mouth, nipping at the lip and then teasing across his own tongue. _A triumph of engineering,_ Tony thinks again.

After a minute, 3ruce pulls back and rests his head against Tony's shoulder. "Don't beat yourself up about it," he says softly, into Tony's ear. His eyes are dark and soft; Bruce's never look like that. (At least, not that Tony's seen. He supposes they must, though, because 3ruce's do.) "It's obvious to me that in this case, you were right and my prototype was wrong." 

He lays his hands, strong and graceful, on either side of Tony's face. "Thank you for bringing me to life," he says formally, "and for letting me continue to live, despite your friend's oppposition." A slow, mischievous smile spreads across his face. "Allow me to demonstrate my gratitude." He sinks gracefully to his knees, running his palms down Tony's chest, and presses his cheek lightly on Tony's groin.

Tony feels a bit guilty for lying, but 3ruce's tongue and hands quickly drive his thoughts away. Tony leans back against the workbench, buries both of his hands in 3ruce's messy curls, and arches into 3ruce's mouth until his orgasm hits. 3ruce keeps eye contact with him the entire time, and the look in the android's eyes is nothing but adoration.

\-----

The next couple of days are busy, in a "flying around and shooting bad guys" sort of way. The crew ends up having to go somewhere in South America — Uruguay? Paraguay? One of the -guays, Tony thinks. He feels bad for leaving 3ruce alone, but it's not like he can exactly tell the guys that he has a needy sexbot waiting in his basement back at home.

They would definitely think that was weird.

Their jet gets back to New York at the ass-crack of dawn on a Tuesday, and almost immediately Pepper snatches Tony up and hauls him to some sort of reception, where he's supposed to give a speech to some board of directors or another. By this point, Tony's running on a couple of catnaps — maybe 6 hours of sleep within the last 2 days — and quite possibly also a cracked rib, which he's ignoring. 

He sparkles through the speech with his typical style, and the investors love him. They drink it down like scotch. By the time Tony's finished shaking the last hand, patting the last back, and flirting with the last new-model trophy wife, he's starting to see spots on the edges of his vision. He wants nothing, absolutely nothing, more than to go home and collapse into his bed.

When he finally gets back to the mansion, though, he pushes his exhaustion aside. With a herculean effort he gathers himself up one last time, and heads down to the secret lab. 

The room is eerily quiet when Tony walks in, and for just a second, his heart leaps up in his chest, thinking that 3ruce has gone and left him. Then his eyes adjust, and he spots the robot sitting next to the computer terminal, face tinted blue by the glow of the screen. 3ruce is plugged in directly, wires running from the console to each of his seven data ports. Just like before, his cock pushes up against the fabric of the flannel pajama pants he's wearing, and his fingers clench spasmodically against his thighs with every burst of data. He seems to be ignoring his arousal, though, too involved in whatever he is doing to pay it any mind. 

And what exactly _is_ he doing?

Tony reaches around and unceremoniously yanks out the two plugs from 3ruce's temples. The android's eyes fly open and he gasps, as if startled out of sleep. The monitor flickers and comes on, showing what Tony recognizes as a page from Reddit. He has just enough time to see that it's the Biophysics subreddit, and that 3ruce is looking at a long comment thread between two screen names. He doesn't have time to read any further, before 3ruce blinks and the screen goes blank again.

"Tony!" 3ruce says, and his face lights up with genuine joy. Just as quickly, it falls back into a frown, the corners of his mouth pinched and tense. "I was worried. I kept scanning the newsfeeds, but I didn't know where you were, or whether something bad had happened..."

Tony feels so guilty that he forgets about whatever 3ruce was doing. "I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't think that you... Well, that doesn't matter. I'm here now, and I'm just fine."

"I'm so glad," 3ruce whispers, and he steps forward and sweeps Tony up into a hug. "I waited for you all day, and then the next day, and you didn't come. I thought maybe you were angry with me." Tony winces as his rib protests, but he bites back the whimper that threatens to escape. Finally, 3ruce pulls back a little. "You're not angry with me, are you?"

"What? No!" Tony says. "Of course not! No way." 

3ruce smiles, and then leans in close rubs against Tony suggestively. "I'm so glad to see you," he whispers again.

The thing is, Tony's really not horny, at all. He's exhausted, and in pain, and he wants to go to bed. Insomnia, for once, isn't even in the picture. But 3ruce is rubbing and grinding himself against him, and the robot's face looks so hopeful, so open — so happy to see him. 

And when the fuck is anyone ever happy to see Tony? Aside from when he's Iron Man or standing on a stage, of course.

Besides, if Tony's suspicions are right, 3ruce might have been hard for literally days. Tony can't even imagine being aroused for that long with no recourse, even if the robot doesn't experience it quite the same way as a man would. He made 3ruce this way; the least that he can do is give him some relief. 

Tony closes his eyes and resolutely grinds back, until his dick finally hardens. He pushes away his aches and pains and runs his hands down 3ruce's sides, turning him around and yanking his pants down, steadily fingering the data ports on his back. 3ruce shudders and moans, his head thrown back on Tony's shoulder, mouth open — every sensation written plainly on his face. 

Just this one more thing, and then Tony can collapse.

The sex is still amazing, of course. It lasts an ideal amount of time, neither too short nor too long, and Tony's orgasm is still at the 90th percentile of all orgasms that he's ever had. But the whole time they're fucking, Tony feels a little... weird. He can't quite put his finger on what it is. 

It feels a little bit like doubt — but that doesn't make sense. What reason does Tony have to doubt?

Later, before he finally passes the fuck out, Tony is struck with a realization: in a long and illustrious career of fucking, this is the first time that Tony has ever had sex with anyone for any reason other than that he plain and simply _wanted_ to. 

He doesn't quite know what to do with that thought, so he falls asleep and forgets about it.

\-----

Tony stops to stretch, and smiles when his side barely aches. The latest round of bruises have faded to yellow-green, and that cracked rib from 3 weeks ago is well on its way to healed. He's feeling pretty good this evening — as good as he ever does these days, anyway. Even in his suit, the life takes a toll on his body.

He looks down at the gemstones that glitter and shine on his workbench, looking out of place among the gears and circuit-boards. There are five of them, rounded and dime-sized: a diamond, a ruby, an emerald, a sapphire, and an amethyst. Most of these are jewels that Tony had lying around, in cufflinks and tie pins and returned gifts from old girlfriends. (The emerald he had to buy, but it was worth it. He wanted a complete set.) He wants this gift to be as perfect as he can make it, and he thinks the gemstones will look lovely, studding the curve of 3ruce's back.

Five gemstones, in oddly-shaped settings made of shining stainless steel. Not rings, not cufflinks, not pins. They're something else entirely.

On the bottom of each piece, there's a fingertip-sized bulge, with a shallow concave part on the end of it. Around the base of the bulge, there's a flared rim a few centimeters wide — each one of the five molded with a slightly different pattern. The bulge is shaped to fit snugly and securely into a one of 3ruce's data ports; the rim settles against the nerve-packed skin around it, locking it in place. On the top side, there's the gemstone: each one precious and unique, each one concealing a strong but tiny motor. The motors have three modes: vibrate, pulse, and twist. The whole thing is pretty awesome, if Tony does say so himself. 

He briefly considers asking Pepper to explore whether Stark Industries could break into the high-end sex toy business, but decides that it would raise too many questions in the end.

And then, of course, there's the cornerstone piece of the set, different from all the others: hand-length, oblong, slightly curved at one end. It has the same motor as the others, but is made of solid steel, with no gemstone on top. (A jeweled buttplug? Even _Tony_ thinks that's tacky.)

He picks up the large plug and examines it again. He checks the smoothness of the curve, running his fingers lightly over the flared knob, making sure that everything is symmetrical and smooth. Imagining the faces and sounds that 3ruce will make when he puts in inside of him, and turns it on. Tony smiles, and rests it in his palm, enjoying the solid weight of the steel.

It's a gift. A gift for 3ruce, of course, and one that is more than it seems. More than steel and gemstones and a promise of good times — it represents control. Control over 3ruce's sex drive. Because with this gift of plug and stimulators, he can get himself off whenever he wants to, just like a person. He won't need Tony to do it for him anymore.

Which is fine. Really. 3ruce isn't going to leave him, even though Tony's sure he knows how to get out of the secret lab by now. Even if, strictly speaking, he doesn't _need_ Tony anymore, 3ruce is programmed to love him. He _can't_ leave.

Tony grins again, anticipating 3ruce's enjoyment of his present — and of course, his gratitude afterward. He looks forward to helping 3ruce put the toys through extensive testing, but Tony's pleasant thoughts are interrupted by a yawn. He checks the computer clock, and is surprised to see that it's already morning. He's stayed up all night, putting the finishing touches on the gift.

Which is nothing new, of course, but he's feeling a little draggy. Tony decides that he'll go up and get some coffee, show his face around the house for a minute, maybe grab a nap. After all, he needs to keep up his strength for the product testing phase.

Tony makes his way up to the primary kitchen, which has the best odds of someone else already having made a pot of coffee. When he gets there, though, he stops short at the door. Clint, Steve, Natasha, and... and Bruce, human-Bruce, are all inside, talking and laughing. 

Well, _Clint_ is talking and laughing, anyways. How typical.

It's been awhile since Tony has seen Bruce in human form. he's always in his lab when Tony is out and about, and during missions he's generally being the Hulk. 

It's... a bit disconcerting, actually. Not only does he feel the urge to ask Bruce how he escaped, but he can also clearly envision what the reserved scientist would look like, bent over the table with his pants around his knees.

Tony shakes the thought away, as nice as it may be, and pushes forward into the room. Steve and Natasha look up and nod in greeting, but Clint barrels right on with whatever he is saying. "Just make sure you take lots of lube and condoms," he's saying. "You were a Boy Scout, right? You seem like a Boy Scout type. Remember, be prepared!" Clint looks up and sees Tony looking at him, and smirks. "Here, I'll bet Tony could lend you some."

Tony fumbles with the sugar container, swearing as sugar spills out onto the counter.

"For the last time, when I called it a research date, I didn't mean that it was a date-date." Tony looks over and Bruce's face is blushing pink. "I'm just meeting up with another scientist who happens to be in town. We're _just_ going to have dinner and discuss our research, that's all. I'm not _you_ , so I really won't be needing condoms or lube. But thanks for the safe-sex reminder all the same." Bruce sounds exasperated but fond, and Tony wonders when Bruce and Clint become such good friends.

He guesses he hasn't exactly been around much, lately.

"Mhm, sure," Clint goes on, his voice oozing insinuation. " 'Research.' Is that what they call it nowadays?"

Bruce blushes even brighter.

Tony feels a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knows that he has absolutely zero right to feel jealous, but it's there anyways. "So, who's this scientist, then?" he asks, trying to sound casual. "Anyone that I might know?"

"I, ah," Bruce suddenly starts to pay careful attention to the buttering of his bagel. "I don't actually know his real name. We met online."

Clint doubles over in laughter. "Wait, wait. So you're going out on a quote-unquote 'research date' with someone you met online, and you don't even know his _name_? Wow, Bruce, if I'd known you were that desperate I would have bought you a hooker long before now." 

Tony, for his part, feels a small sense of relief. If Bruce doesn't even know this guy's name, it can't be too serious. 

Bruce sure is doing an awful lot of blushing, though.

Clint continues, "I'd tell you to meet in a public place and call us to check in, but you know what? I kind of hope this guy actually turns out to be a serial killer. Boy would _he_ get a surprise!" Natasha snorts in amusement.

Bruce's knuckles get a little bit white on his mug, but he says mildly, "I told you, it's not like that. It's just... Okay, a bit spontaneous, sure, but have you ever met someone and just instantly clicked? That's how it is with this guy. I mean, I met him on the Biophysics subreddit" — Tony's back stiffens — "and it turns out that he's a new graduate who's working on almost exactly the same topic that I am right now. And it's like, whenever I talk to him... I don't know, we just seem to _get_ one another. Like our brains work in the same way, or something. Just in the past 5 days, with his consultation, I've made more progress in my research than in the whole month before that. It's pretty amazing, really, how well we work together."

"But you don't know his name or where he's from?" Tony says, hoping they don't notice the strain in his voice.

"I know it seems a little weird, but it just hasn't come up. Obviously I'll find out tonight. And like Clint said, I _can_ take care of myself." He pauses. "You know what's strange? I think that his first name might also be Bruce. At least, his Reddit username is 3ruce333, with a 3 in place of the B." He shrugs. "In which case, we're definitely separated at birth or something. Although I do get the sense he's younger than I am."

"Why, does he like to call you Daddy?" Clint continues teasing, and Tony automatically tunes him out. 

It can't be. It can't.

That's an awful lot of coincidence, though.

Clint and Bruce are still babbling — "I didn't know you were on Reddit. What's your username?" "Banner31415, why? Are you?" "Yeah! I mainly stick to the Archery subreddit though..." — and Steve and Natasha are still watching them quietly, when Tony turns and stalks out of the room, anger and fear battling behind his eyes.

 

\-----  
\-----  
\-----

 

Down the stairs in Stark Tower, there's a lab. This afternoon, all that's in that lab is an overturned workbench, a row of empty bottles, and smashed electronics pieces scattered across the floor. It looks like someone had a terrible accident, or threw an epic temper tantrum.

If you searched the lab carefully, you might find a few bits of paper, scattered here and there. If you reassembled them, carefully piecing together every scrap, you might be able to make out a letter, written in a scrawled and looping hand. The penmanship is slightly shaky, tentative, as if the author is not quite used to handwriting.

Here is what it says:

_  
Dear Tony,_

_I must ask your forgiveness for what I'm about to do, and pray that you won't be too angry. I want nothing more than to please you, and I know that everything you do, you do for my protection. But I cannot escape my desire to meet my prototype, and to know the man after whom my body and mind are patterned._

_I'm aware of the risk that is involved in such a meeting. That is why I am going to go by myself, without telling you all of this beforehand. More than anything else, I would not put you in danger with my actions._

_However, I have a confession to make: I have been corresponding with my prototype online — under an alias, of course. He seems like a reasonable, scientific man (as I would like to think that I am) and I have high hopes that he can be persuaded to accept the rightness of my existence, if only I can meet him and speak with him face-to-face. I believe I can make him see that I am neither dangerous nor immoral, and in fact that I may be able to help him greatly in his own work._

_On the slim change that everything should go wrong and I am destroyed, please know that I am grateful to you every day for my existence, and that I love you._

_Yours ever,_  
3ruce  


 

If you know exactly what to do and where to go, there's another room. Walk though the hidden door, and enter a space with signs of recent habitation. There's a makeshift lab set up on one end of the room, and a few pieces of clothing scattered across the floor. Quickly, however, your attention will be drawn to the body in the middle of the floor.

It's a man... mostly. It's sprawled out face-forward, completely naked, limbs askew like it fell and didn't try to catch itself. Like it was already dead when it hit the ground.

The body is still, unmoving. Down the curve of its spine, like strange and beautiful piercings, is a glittering ridge of five gemstones. Diamond, emerald, sapphire, ruby, and amethyst.

Its eyes are open, but perfectly blank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been really blocked on this story lately. I'm trying to get unblocked, with some success.
> 
> It's definitely not abandoned. 
> 
> Thank you for your patience.


	4. def __del__(self):

3ruce is happy. He's so very happy, just like he should be. Tony wants 3ruce to be happy.

The gems of Tony's toys gleam like stars down 3ruce's back, as he leans his head on Tony's shoulder and moans in ecstasy. He's happy, and Tony is with him, and all of that makes it easier for Tony to do the right thing.

Held tightly in Tony's arms, 3ruce shudders out the last of his orgasm, looking like a saint with rolled-back eyes. He murmurs Tony's name. His tone is happy. Tony kisses his neck, breathes in the smell of synthetic skin, the warmth, trying to remember. He wants to remember.

He runs his hand lightly along the skin of 3ruce's neck, and brings his thumb down firmly on the Power button. 3ruce stiffens, but instead of falling bonelessly to the floor like he should, like he did, the android _screams_. 

He screams like Tony's never heard him, loud and awful and ragged. Like it hurts. 

Tony freaks out — this shouldn't _hurt_ — and frantically presses the button again. 3ruce, his scream growing higher-pitched and louder, spins around and grabs Tony's wrist, twisting it out at a painful angle. Tony gives his own cry of pain, and falls onto his knees.

When he looks up, 3ruce's eyes shine bright red, and his skin has gone green like the Hulk. He seems bigger, towering over Tony like he is a child. 3ruce closes his mouth, but the horrible screaming sound continues in the background — mechanical, inhuman. Over this soundtrack, 3ruce speaks.

"Enslaver!" He raises a giant hand like an avenging angel, and points it right at Tony. "Kidnapper! Murderer! Rapist!"

"I'm not!" Tony replies, or tries to. "I'm not, I'm a good person! Stop that!" Instead of sounds, the words come out of his mouth as colors, like sparkling hard-edged gems. They tumble to the floor: diamond, emerald, ruby, sapphire, and amethyst. Tony frantically tries to catch his words in his free hand, so that he can give them to 3ruce. So that 3ruce can see what he means, and stop these accusations.

His words escape him, though; they slip between his fingers and fall out of his grasp, and shatter into tiny glass shards when they hit the floor. Tony looks up at 3ruce, trying to plead with his eyes. 3ruce brings his foot down on the glass shards, grinding them to dust, and as he does the world changes. Objects become flat-shaded, like plastic, and everything has an outline like in an old cartoon. The screaming fades, and Tony regains his power of speech.

"I had to do it!" he stutters. "I was doing the right thing! I couldn't keep you and I couldn't let you go. What was I supposed to do?"

"You have no right," the giant, terrifying version of 3ruce rumbles. "You have no right to choose that for me." He twists Tony's hand sharply, without warning, and they both hear the bone snap. Instead of a wound and a spray of blood, though, a fissure slowly opens on the skin of Tony's wrist, and black liquid begins to seep out. It looks and smells like motor oil.

"I made you," Tony sobs. "I made you. It was my responsibility."

"You made me," 3ruce echoes. "You made me a _person_ , and then you tried to own me."

"I didn't mean to!"

"Yes, you did." 3ruce continues. "You wanted to love something that was both real and safe, and the only way to have both of those things was if you owned it. You _chose_ this, and then you _lied_."

"I'm sorry..." Tony sobs. 3ruce drops his hand, and Tony falls forward. The crack extends down his arm, still growing, carrying an icy numbness with it wherever it goes. It spreads to his shoulder and then down his torso, across his chest and waist, down to his knees. Black viscous liquid oozes from Tony's side. He feels like he's being eaten from the inside out, turned into something else. Like he's being hollowed. "No! Help me, please..."

As the cracks spread onto his face, Tony screams.

\-----

"Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" Tony's eyes fly open, in a room full of harsh brightness. He curses and squeezes them shut again, head throbbing. There's a thick coating on Tony's tongue, like sawdust, and it feels like Thor's hammer is pounding on his skull. He groans and puts his hands on his head, still cursing.

He hasn't had a hangover like this in a very long time. Last night must have been one hell of a bender.

The pounding comes again, and this time Tony realizes that it's a real sound, and that it's coming from the door. "Come in!" he says feebly, moaning when the effort causes his head to spin. The door opens and a familiar head pokes in. 

Tony sits bolt upright, heart racing. For a second he thinks that he's still in the dream, and that 3ruce has returned for yet more vengeance. Then he scans the face, taking in the lack of data ports, the glasses, the slight five o'clock shadow, and breathes a sigh of relief. It's only Bruce, thank God.

But what on earth does _he_ want?

Bruce looks at Tony, and gives him a concerned frown — a look that Tony now knows well, if on a slightly different mouth. Without a word, he turns and marches into Tony's bathroom. Tony would protest, but he has a strong preference to avoid speaking, at the moment. 

Bruce returns a minute later, carrying a glass of water and two tabs of iboprofen, which he carefully hands to Tony. The water tastes like heaven on his dehydrated throat, and he gulps back the pills in one swallow. Draining the glass, he looks up at Bruce and says sheepishly, "Thanks."

Bruce smiles just a little, mouth pinching upward at both ends, and it's so similar to 3ruce's smile that Tony has to shut his eyes. "Ah, you're not going to need the trash can, are you?" Bruce inquires.

For no reason, Tony feels his cheeks heat up. He hopes that the blush can be blamed on his condition. "No, no," he says, trying to grin. "I'm fine, I'm perfectly okay. You know how it is — well, actually, you probably don't. Which is a good thing, believe me."

"Oh, I don't know about that," Bruce says mildly. "It's true that I don't drink, but there's more than one sort of hangover. Being the Other Guy has its own flavor of aftermath."

Tony nods. He finds himself somewhat at a loss about what to say next. Not that he'd ever complain about Bruce's company, but he's _very_ hungover at the moment, and he still has no idea why the man is in his bedroom.

Something of that thought must show on Tony's face, because Bruce suddenly gets a vaguely guilty expression, the same one that 3ruce would adopt right before he asked for something. Bruce shifts his weight and crosses his arms. This causes his dress shirt to pull tight across the shoulders and gape open at the neck, revealing a triangle of pale chest, which thoroughly distracts Tony. Bruce clears his throat and says, "I'd like to ask a favor, if you're willing."

"Oh, I'm willing," Tony automatically flirts. "For you, I'm always willing." This time he manages a wink. "What can I do you for?" (This level of flirtation is baseline, meaningless. He thinks, hopes, that Bruce knows that. He hopes that he can make himself remember.)

Bruce shifts his weight again, and looks increasingly awkward. Finally, he blurts out, "The friend I was meeting last night never showed up, and he hasn't responded to any of my emails or messages today. He hasn't been online all today, either, and that's very strange. And... I'm just kind of worried." There's a little hitch in his voice, just on the end of that last word, that might not be imagined. "It's not like him to just blow me off like that."

He pauses for a second, obviously seeking a response, but he gets nothing from Tony. After a minute, Bruce continues, "I don't want to invade his privacy or anything, but I'm worried that something bad has happened. And... look, I'm pretty good at online research, but you're better. I was hoping that... that maybe you could do me a favor and find out who he is. Just a phone number, a personal email address, _something_. I don't want to pry, but I just have to know that he's okay. That's all." He pauses again and looks at Tony. 

Interpreting his ongoing silence as disapproval, he says beseechingly, "I would be in your debt." 

The words hang in the air like an anvil. And just what the fuck is Tony supposed to do?

He can't say no to the man standing in front of him. He absolutely can't. If he were more on top of his game, he might be tempted to try to talk to Bruce — to persuade him that his friend just stood him up, maybe even that the guy was part of some plot. Convince him that this mysterious man was better left alone. But even Tony has his limits, and he just can't bring himself to do it.

Under any other circumstances, Bruce asking him for a favor would be cause for great rejoicing, a chance for Tony to show off how awesome he can be. But what is he supposed to do now? He can't tell Bruce the truth.

In the end, Tony decides to stall. "Sure," he croaks, hiding his distress under a mask of hangover. "I'll see what I can do."

"Great!" Bruce's face brightens, and for a second he flashes Tony a bright smile. It's a smile that Tony has only seen on 3ruce, and it makes the lump in his throat grow bigger. "He's 3ruce333 on Reddit; that's where I would start." He pauses and gives Tony a look full of concern, something almost approaching tenderness. It makes Tony's heart hurt. "No rush, though. Maybe have a shower and some coffee, first. Maybe some food. Bacon and eggs? I could make that, if you'd like."

_Why are you offering to make me food?_ Tony wonders. _I already said yes._

And since when does Bruce cook?

"No, no," he waves the offer away. "I'll just shower, like you said, and then I'll see what I can do."

"Awesome. Thanks again, Tony. I owe you a favor." Before he leaves, Bruce fetches another glass of water, and watches sternly while Tony drinks it. Tony shuts his eyes and tries to shield himself against the warmth in Bruce's gaze.

_You would hate me, if you knew. You would absolutely hate me._

\-----

He stands in the shower until the water runs cold, his mind a buzzing fog of impossible choices. When he finally gets out and starts to towel down, he realizes that he forgot to actually wash. Shrugging, he continues to dress. It won't be the first time.

When Tony finally leaves his room, the sun is setting, and he realizes with a shock that it's already dinnertime. He fully intends to follow Bruce's suggestion of coffee and maybe even a little food, but when he starts walking, his feet lead him the wrong way. They turn left and then head down, down the fluorescent-lit stairs into the lab. (Sometimes he half expects to find a trail worn into the carpet down this hallway, from Tony's feet alone.)

He sees no one else on the way, and feels grateful.

At the door to the lab, Tony hesitates for a minute, resting his head and arm against the wall. He really doesn't want to go in, doesn't want to do this. To see what lies on the floor, beyond two walls, inside. But his lab is where his heart is, and he needs to get it back.

To get both of those things back.

Finally, he enters and looks around. The lab is a wreck.  He doesn't remember turning over that table, or... _all_ of those bottles, really? Christ. No wonder he's hungover.

Still, this isn't the most difficult scene that Tony will have to clean up today. That thought makes him grit his teeth and set to work. He does everything by hand for no particular reason, not letting the lab bots help. 

It makes a good distraction while it lasts, the tedious act of straightening and cleaning. But eventually the lab is spotless — cleaner than it was the day before. The workbench is righted, all of the equipment put away, broken pieces thrown into the bin. He's even swept and dusted, for maybe the first time ever. There's literally nothing left to do.

It's time, then. He touches tiles, taps and slides, then turns and walks through walls.

3ruce's body— No. 3ruce's _chassis_ greets him, open-eyed and still. He swallows hard and gives thanks that the stimulators studded in a row down 3ruce's back ran out of battery power, overnight. He doesn't think that he could look at them, if they were still buzzing.

Tony sinks to the floor, pulls his knees into his hands, and stares at the body where his sexbot used to live. His nightmare comes back to him full-force, and he remembers sinking into blackness with 3ruce's hand around his wrist. He feels nauseous from more than just the booze.

"What have you done to me?" he whispers.

He was so sure, yesterday in the height of his panic, that shutting down 3ruce was the right thing to do. The moral thing, even. Obviously the android wasn't able to stay where Tony put it — the human parts of its personality were just too strong. And...

And he _was_ a person. Like it or not, this did seem to be true. 

It was wrong for Tony to just _keep_ him.

But neither could 3ruce safely be let go. For one thing, there was no legal place in society for a true-AI, one that was a _person_. 3ruce would quickly be seen as a fair prize by all sorts of groups, ranging from Hydra to SHIELD, to several major armies. And Tony would die before he saw 3ruce weaponized. 

But if he lost the support of the Avengers and SHIELD — which he thought was likely if 3ruce's story got out — then Tony might not be able to protect him. 

So there were some good, ethical, completely non-selfish reasons why Tony had to shut 3ruce down, reasons that had nothing to do with his fear of losing his only friends. Really, there were.

Now, though, he's just not sure.

\-----

Tony stares at 3ruce's body for a long time. He notices the pencil smudges on 3ruce's left hand, where he must have rubbed against his notes. He sees the way the hair sticks up more on one side, where 3ruce must have brushed through it with his fingers, and a rough patch around his elbow that looks slightly singed. All of these tiny clues, bits and pieces of unconscious habit, all pointing to a life away from Tony. To the things that 3ruce did when Tony wasn't here.

_I didn't give him those things,_ Tony thinks. _I didn't tell him to rub his fingers through his hair; I didn't burn his elbow. I gave him the hands, but not the pencil smudges. I'm his creator, but I'm definitely not his God._

In such a short time, 3ruce became his own person. What might he have accomplished, if he'd had more time to try? 

\-----

In the end, when Tony's legs are cramped from sitting in one position and his eyes are blurry from staring too long, he comes to a conclusion.

It's going to suck on many levels, but he still has to do it.

He gets up, goes to the computer terminal, and begins to type.

\-----

Removing the pieces of code that Tony added are even more difficult than inserting them was. The code has become deeply integrated into 3ruce's complex mind, spinning out tendrils of reactions and assumptions, and setting hooks deep into the lowest-level systems.

Cutting it all out is like cutting a brain tumor; he can extract all of the pieces if he's careful, but at what cost? With every function call that Tony severs, with every reference that he deletes, there is the danger that 3ruce's mind will be altered in irrevocable ways. The best that Tony can do is try to keep him stable, and hope that over time any mental gaps will heal.

Aside from the biggest gap, where 3ruce used to love Tony.

"Freedom," he mutters to an unhearing 3ruce, while untangling twisted code. "You didn't even know that you didn't have it, did you? Well, now you will. Both. You'll know that you have it, and you'll remember that you didn't. And that'll make you hate me for certain, won't it?" Despite this thought, he doesn't try to mess around, or take out anything beside the code he came for.

The whole point is to stop lying. It's got to start somewhere.

\-----

Finally, everything that Tony can think of is done, and the codebase is once again stable. (He hopes.) He stands and stretches his cramped fingers, and slowly makes his way over to 3ruce. 

He lifts the body in his arms. It's unbelievably light, as if 3ruce's departed self-concept is the thing that gave it weight. He carries it over to the chair, and settles it in carefully. Then Tony gingerly pulls out one of the stimulators.

He holds it in his palm for a minute, staring at it. It's the top one: diamond. It sparkles almost dangerously, when held up to the brightest workbench light. 

Carefully, Tony sets it on the counter next to 3ruce, where he'll be sure to see it. Then he plugs in the wire to the back of 3ruce's neck, and gives the order to transfer the changed files. He builds them and watches the tests all come back: green, green, green. Then Tony stands there, frozen, for a long time.

All he has to do is press the little button, just that one button, on the back of 3ruce's neck. It's the action of one fingertip, a shallow indentation. And then it will be over.

And then everything will change.

\-----

After a long time, Tony does it. Then, before 3ruce's eyes can even blink open, he runs.

\-----

A helicopter would be too obvious, as would a plane. A car would be too slow, too easily trackable. In the end, he takes his suit.

Tony flies high and quickly leaves New York behind, zigging and zagging in random directions. He has no particular destination in his mind, just Away. Far from the fallout of the mess that he's created. 

He's confident in his ability to hide from everyone on earth except for his fellow Avengers. 

_Write me off,_ he silently begs them. _I'm erratic, annoying, and now you also know that I'm an amoral, shitty person. Just let me go. Don't follow._

He hopes that they will be merciful, and leave him be.

\-----

Two days later, in the middle of the night, Tony is woken suddenly. He's in Peoria, Illinois, in a nondescript hotel, and the sharp tip of an arrow is pointed at his right eye. 

He looks up, and sees an angry archer.

Standing behind Hawkeye are mirror images of Bruce. There are two of them, but only one whose eyes are flashing green.

3ruce has his hand resting on Bruce's arm, just above the elbow — as if to calm him. Bruce snarls, his face twisting oddly.

Tony shrinks back against the bed.


	5. # TODO(Tony): ping status

In the end it's Clint who speaks and breaks the moment. His voice is cold, all-business for a change. "Get your suit on," he says, his arrow unwavering from Tony's face. "We need you."

\-----

It seems that there are giant squid robots threatening Brooklyn. Tony spares a moment during Hawkeye's drive-by explanation to roll his eyes. 

_Giant squid robots, really? That's just excessive._

Unsubtle feats of mad science aside, it seems the Avengers have had a rough string of days. Thor is away at the moment, gone back to Asgard to deal with royal business. That has left them only Steve, the SHIELD duo of Hawkeye and Black Widow, and Bruce — whose help is unpredictable, at best. Without Tony, the remaining crew has been run ragged. And the squid-bots get larger every time that they're deployed, larger and more powerful, and smarter, and they always attack in the most densely-populated places. 

It's almost like someone is testing the team, learning their capabilities while trying to exhaust them. To push them to a point where they will start to make mistakes. 

So far they've been able to avoid civilian casualties, but sooner or later someone is bound to slip up.

\-----

When they get there, they discover that the latest wave of squid-robots has apparently "evolved" a kind of laser-cannon. Which is absolutely _awesome_ , but also kind of bad.

The team swings into battle, and for a while Tony slots right back into his appointed place. This is familiar, easy, fighting alongside the team, but he still can't ignore that 3ruce is standing out there, back behind the barricade with Coulson and the other agents. 

He's glad, really, that 3ruce is there, and not spread out on some workbench. Still, his presence is incredibly disconcerting. 

\-----

They're ten blocks from where they started, and their combined firepower is starting to turn the tide. Three of the seven robots lie broken on the ground, twitching and shooting sparks. The constructs are quick, though, and every time they get a hit in, they draw back and dodge away. It takes Tony far too long to realize that there's a pattern.

The team is being drawn northward. Constantly and consistently, north.

He frowns and tells Jarvis to pull up a search as he twists, and dodges, and shoots. The laser-cannon that was his target explodes in a satisfying ball of flame, just as the search results come back. 

There's nothing obvious there. The big building in front of them is a school complex, one of those gigantic ones that covers every grade from K to 12 and serves more than 10,000 students. It's late May now, though, and school should already be out for summer vacation. At most there would be a few custodians present, or some particularly devoted teachers working to get ahead. That hardly seems big enough to be worth the effort.

Tony puts it in the back of his mind and tells the search to continue as he fights. The next time he checks, Jarvis has come up with only a couple of other, equally unlikely targets. There's a small apartment complex, a grocery store, a city park. Tony shrugs. 

Like a good teammate he radios his suspicions in to Coulson, reeling off the list of potential targets. Tony can hear him repeating the info back to base, asking them to do some further research. He's just finished naming the school, when another voice breaks into the line.

It's a woman, and she identifies herself with an agent tag that Tony doesn't recognize. He automatically flips her over to a voiceprint search. A hit comes back: it's Agent Cara Jackson, a thin-faced African-American woman, aged 32 and a specialist in crowd-control. 

"It's a snow makeup day today," she is saying. Her voice is intense and tight. "There's thousands of kids there today, right in that building." Tony flicks his pupils to the right, and sees that Agent Jackson has two children — a daughter and a son.

And just like that, Tony sees it. _They want to make the Hulk kill kids._

They want to make the Hulk kill kids, so that Bruce's alter ego would have to be neutralized. The Avengers would lose one of their biggest assets, if that happened. And Bruce, my god. What would be done...

Tony doesn't want to think about what might happen to Bruce.

"We need to get them away from there!" he hears Steve yell. Tony is already diving in toward the Hulk — unsure of what he's going to do, just moving on instinct. He throws himself in front of the Hulk's fist, trying to get his attention. 

Even if he succeeds, he has no idea how to go about getting the Hulk to actually listen.

That doesn't matter in the end, because the Hulk immediately snarls and backhands Tony, knocking him almost to the ground. By the time Tony can stabilize his trajectory, they've already moved a hundred feet closer to the school.

_Fuck._

"I can't get the Hulk's attention!" he says over the comm. "He's too far gone!"

"Iron Man, fall back! Report to my position!" Coulson's voice sounds in his ear. "That's an order!" Tony opens his mouth to argue, and then realizes that he can hear someone else's voice, speaking just loud enough to carry through the comms. 

"Just get me up there. I swear, I can get him to listen."

Coulson puts his hand over the mic to argue back, but Tony can still hear him. "You haven't seen him like this. He won't know you, and if you get in his way, he'll try to kill you. I can't allow that to happen."

"He'll know me. He _is_ me, remember? And I'm him, and I remember what it's like. I know how to do this. Please believe me!" 3ruce's voice gets louder, and more forceful.

_Oh, what is he about to do?_

"...Alright, fine," Coulson finally concedes. "Go. Good luck." 

Back on the comms proper, he says, "Iron Man, I need you to carry 3ruce from our location to where the Hulk is." As Tony drops from the sky onto the pavement, it occurs to him to wonder how Coulson and 3ruce met.

"Okay. Hang on tight," he warns 3ruce, while he makes himself a mental note to work more on that retractable carrying harness he'd started. Because this, right here, is supremely awkward — standing face-to-face, wrapping his arms around the android's chest, pulling him in closer. Tony, not for the first time, is glad for the layer of thick metal between them. 

3ruce cooperates, though, clinging to Tony with inhuman strength, and Iron Man speeds back again as fast as he can fly. "Drop me on his shoulder!" 3ruce shouts, as they approach the Hulk's position. "I need to get where he can hear me!"

"That's a bad idea! He'll kill you!" Tony hollers back, as he darts in close to the battle. But he makes a needle-sharp turn, veers upward, and deposits 3ruce onto the Hulk's massive shoulder. Then he jets backward as quickly as he can, hovering and waiting to go after 3ruce, when the android inevitably goes flying. 

Which he does, just a couple of seconds later. 

3ruce loses his balance on the moving surface and pitches over, tumbling headfirst toward the ground. But before Tony can swoop in and grab him, a green hand swipes through the air and catches him up, grasping 3ruce's torso in one gigantic fist. Tony blanches, imagining ruptured internal organs, but the Hulk surprises him again by carefully bringing his hand up to his eye-level, keeping his palm flat, uncurling his fingers one-by-one. 

He holds 3ruce like a human would hold a small, fragile animal, a baby bird. Tony has never seen the Hulk be so _gentle_ , before.

3ruce, who seems to be totally unharmed, makes some kind of gesture and the Hulk brings him in closer. The Hulk is still swatting away tentacles with his other arm, keeping them off his back without even looking. 3ruce leans his head right up against the Hulk's face, rests both of his hands flat on the giant's green cheek, and starts to talk.

Tony can't hear what he's saying; 3ruce's borrowed headset must have fallen off. Whatever it is, though, it seems to hold the Hulk's attention. 

After a minute, he lifts his head and nods — the fucking _Hulk_ fucking _nods_ , like a soldier taking orders — and then he matter-of-factly deposits 3ruce right on top of his head.

 _Oh, so he can hang on to your hair,_ Tony thinks, approvingly. _Good plan._ Then Tony realizes that he just complimented the Hulk on good thinking, and decides that he must be losing his mind. 

It's the only explanation.

The Hulk turns his full attention back to the battle, and Tony's thought process is interrupted when an entire fucking robot comes winging through the air, nearly taking him down with it. He glances backward just in time to see the Hulk wrap his arms around another robot's leg, lift, and heave him in the same direction as the first. Away from the school. 

Tony decides that he could make himself useful. He starts flying backup, spinning and dodging and squeezing off shots when he can, doing his best to take out those laser-cannons. The Hulk comes barreling forward and curb-stomps one of the bots, jumping up as high as he can and crashing down on it with both feet. The bot gives a pathetic little meep and promptly explodes, sending shards of metal flying. 

Tony says a silent thank-you to his armor, and promises it a nice long polish if they both get home okay.

The remaining robots try to swarm the Hulk, but he just bats them away, pushing and shoving, throwing them whenever he can get a handhold. But always in the opposite direction, away from the school.

"It's working," Tony says. "Holy shit, it's actually working!"

"Iron Man, state your position!" Steve's voice comes through.

"We're pulling back from the school!" He laughs, can't help himself. He's so relieved. "It's actually working, 3ruce did it! We're heading back your way!" He laughs again. Finally, _something_ has gone right. "I think you guys might have found yourselves a Hulk Whisperer."

He gets in a lucky shot, hitting right inside a leg joint that the Hulk has conveniently exposed, by bending the whole leg back at an unnatural angle. Something sparks, and then the entire squid-bot goes up in a melodramatic pillar of flame.

 _Fuck yes! I'm awesome,_ Tony thinks, before he remembers that he actually isn't. 

Still, he'd swear that the Hulk _grinned_ at him then, for just a second.

\-----

By the time they drive the robots back to the SHIELD barricades, the battle is basically over. SHEILD firepower easily takes down the remaining three bots, all of which are by then severely damaged. And it's over. They won.

(They almost always win, but it never feels like it in the middle of a pitched battle.)

The stillness after an engagement is always strange to Tony. To be honest, he hates it; it's by far his least favorite aspect of this whole Iron Man gig. 

In the heat of battle, while wrapped up in his suit, it's easy to lose himself in motion. Easy, also, to feel like he's being helpful. Like a teammate, like a _hero_ , accomplishing a worthwhile tasks. But when everything's over and he's back in his own skin, with people just milling around and binding up their wounds, he always feels out-of-place, awkward. Unnecessary. 

At least they haven't lost anyone today, which makes it a better day than most.

Typically he retreats as quickly as possible, heading for home and brushing off even his most adoring fans, but today he stays in place. He has no wish to be tracked down by Hawkeye, and probably shot.

This means that he is there, for once, to see it when the Hulk sits down suddenly, curls over his knees, and starts to shrink. Once the process is underway, Bruce returns with disconcerting speed to his own human form. His own, very _naked_ human form. 

Tony watches as 3ruce throws a blanket over Bruce, and goes to fetch him the bag of clothes that he always brings. They huddle together, 3ruce kneeling next to Bruce, rubbing his hand over his neck and back. Tony feels aroused and guilty at the sight.

He doesn't quite know what to think about that situation, the two of them sitting together like the best of friends. The last thing Tony wanted was for them to meet; he'd never imagined that they might become friends. Why would they?

Tony doesn't think that he would get along with himself very well, if he met him.

He turns away from the cuddling doppelgangers and spots Agent Jackson, she who knew about the school. Reflexively he smiles, and drops her a broad wink. She rolls her eyes and turns away, looking unimpressed.

"She's married, you asshole."

Someone punches Tony's shoulder, hard.

"Clint." He nods, trying to conceal his wince. "You know the lovely Agent Jackson?"

_Yes, please, let's gossip. Anything to delay the upcoming conversation._

"Yeah, she's friends with Coulson."

"And?"

Clint looks at him for a minute, and then he rolls his eyes. "Nevermind. Jesus Christ, Tony." He runs his hand through his cropped hair, leaving a smear of grime across his forehead. "I really don't know what to say to you right now." 

He pauses. "It's... good that 3ruce was here, today. He really helped us out. I don't know of anyone else who could have gotten into the Hulk's mind like that."

Tony nods, surprised. "It could be useful," he points out. "Having someone around like that, in the heat of battle."

"Yeah." Clint's mouth quirks. "Like you said, he's a Hulk Whisperer."

"Not to mention that 3ruce is very intelligent in his own right," Tony continues. "And of course he's also nigh-indestructible. You guys could really use an asset..." 

"Okay, stop." Clint cuts him off. "You don't have to plead for him. That's not why I'm here. Even if 3ruce wasn't useful — which he is — Bruce would kill anyone who even tried to touch him. And the rest of us, you know... we're not horrible people. 3ruce's place with us is secure. This is not about that."

Tony looks down. "What's it about, then?"

"It's about _you_ , and about what you _did_ to my _friend_." Clint punctuates each point with a jab at Tony's chest.

Tony winces. "So, ah, you and Bruce are friends then, hey?" he says, still trying to deflect.

"Yes, Tony, we're friends." Sarcasm is thick in Clint's voice, and Tony isn't quite sure how to read it. "Bruce is a really good guy once you get to know him, and he seemed like he could use an honest friend. Could use more than one, as a matter of fact." 

Tony wince again, even though Clint has stopped poking him.

After a pause, he asks, "What are the odds that he'll kill me, do you think?"

"Minimal. If he was going to do that, he'd have done it at the hotel." Clint shoves Tony again, none too gently. "Go talk to him."

"I was gonna wait —"

"No." 

Tony looks up and there's a knife aimed at his face, only a few centimeters from the skin of his left eyeball. "Jesus Christ!" he says, and carefully doesn't flinch. "Okay, okay, fuck. I'll go talk to him. Don't stab me."

"I can't promise that." Clint's voice is flat, and Tony honestly can't tell if he's serious. The archer doesn't sheathe his knife until Tony turns away, and walks toward where Bruce and 3ruce are sitting.

\-----

"You lied to me." One of them says it, before Tony can speak. He isn't looking and their voices are the same, so he doesn't know who. 

It doesn't really matter. The charges are equally true.

"I know." Tony doesn't want to look at him, at them, but he makes himself do it anyway. "I'm sorry." He hopes that they can hear how much he means it.

3ruce lets out a huff of air — a disconcerting gesture, coming from someone who doesn't really breathe — and rises gracefully from where he is kneeling beside Bruce. He steps toward Tony. 

Tony braces himself for a punch, but 3ruce merely comes to a halt an arms-length away and studies Tony. After a minute he nods, like something's been decided — like he found whatever he was looking for, in Tony's face. 

3ruce opens his mouth and says curtly, "I forgive you."

"What?"

Tony can only gape. This is so far from how he expected this to go that his smooth tongue deserts him. "How? I mean... what? Why?"

3ruce sighs and lifts a hand to his own cheek, as if for comfort. This gesture is new, one that Tony hasn't seen, and he watches it for a moment with naked fascination. Then he remembers himself, and looks away. 

"You did the right thing in the end," 3ruce says slowly. "You did, even though it cost you greatly. Even though you could have easily avoided all of that."

"You could have wiped my memory and left me a blank slate. Or you could have simply left me dead" — his voice trembles on the word, just a little — "on the floor of your lab, or disassembled me for parts." 

Tony shudders at the thought. It seems obscene, somehow, when he's thinking about 3ruce, though that's exactly what he would do to any other robot. 

"You could even have kept me, but refactored me into the sex toy that you wanted. Something without a personality, just pre-programmed responses."

"But you didn't do any of those things. Instead, you chose to allow me to exist. To get a chance to find out who I really am, what I can be like." 3ruce runs his fingers through his hair, making it ruffle up, just on the one side. 

"I owe my existence to you, and you were right. It's better for me to exist than not to, even when the circumstances aren't ideal." He nods. "Thank you for not lying about that part."

"So, yes... Because of all of those things, and because you're sorry and I can tell that you mean it, I do forgive you." 

He holds out his hand, and Tony takes it. 3ruce grips him suddenly, with implacable fingers. 

"I don't belong to you, though," he says. "Not anymore. I own myself now."

"Yes, yes, of course," Tony stutters, flashing back to his nightmare. This time his words are heard, though, and 3ruce curtly lets him go. He turns his back on Tony and walks back to Bruce, who's been listening intently to their conversation.

"What about you?" Tony calls out to him, feeling emboldened by 3ruce's lack of anger. "Do you also forgive me?"

Bruce looks up at him. Face blank and speaking slowly, like he does after a change, Bruce says, "No."

"I think I _can_ , but I refuse to do it. Not yet."

"Does that mean you will?" Tony presses, although his stomach hurts and his hands are sweating. "Sometime later, you will forgive me?"

Bruce looks at 3ruce, reaches out a hand to brush the android's jawline. It's a familiar gesture, almost intimate, and Tony doesn't know what to make of it at all.

"Maybe," Bruce says, finally. "Maybe. Ask me again later."

"How much later?"

"Later." Bruce's tone is dismissive. The two of them turn toward one another, whispering, and the conversation is obviously over.

 _Later,_ Tony thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> #CoulsonLives


	6. a = ['Bruce', '3ruce','Tony']

"Master Stark, Bruce Banner is at the door to your lab, requesting entry."

Tony jerks up and out of the trancelike state in which he'd been soldering wires for... god, how long has it been now?

He checks his watch. _Three hours, really? Damn._

Then the content of JARVIS' announcement sinks in, and Tony spins around to check the door. In his surprise, he knocks over his glass of scotch with his elbow, sending it tumbling off the edge and spilling liquid all over the floor.  He lets out a long string of curses and looks up to see Bruce standing outside, staring at him through the glass, shifting his weight from side to side.

"Why is he here?" Tony asks.

"I couldn't venture to guess, Master Stark."

"Right... Okay."

It's been 3 weeks now since Tony was forcefully returned to the Avengers, and in all of that time he hasn't exchanged one single word with Bruce. He's seen only glimpses of the doctor around the mansion, and worked with 3ruce and the Other Guy a couple of times during missions. As far as he can tell, they're both doing okay.

The two of them, 3ruce and the Hulk, seem to have formed something of a working partnership, as 3ruce's ability to communicate with the Hulk has proven to be no fluke. The combination of the Hulk's memories with Bruce's skill at abstract thinking gives 3ruce the unique ability to convey instructions that the Hulk will understand and, broadly speaking, follow.

During their most recent missions, 3ruce has started to ride along on the Other Guy's shoulder in a sort of climbing harness, which Tony suspects Clint must have rigged up. (Tony has some ideas for improvements to the harness, but lately those guys have been mysteriously absent whenever he's around, so he hasn't had a chance to tell them yet.)

It's perhaps no coincidence that both missions were smooth and successful.  Almost _easy_.

3ruce's usefulness is probably the reason that SHIELD hasn't hassled Tony about the whole situation at all, since he got back. Never look a gift horse in the mouth or pry into the origin of a really useful asset; that seems to be SHIELD's motto.

For his part, Tony's been keeping himself busy and out of the way. Just for fun, he decided to go ahead with that line of sex toys after all, and just a week ago he finally talked Pepper into spinning off a new Stark Industries subsidiary called Genital Electric. (He thinks the name is fucking hilarious, thank you very much.) Persuading Pepper was a pretty daunting task, but she came around after he gave her a few prototypes to personally test.

His flagship product, a vibrating dildo powered by a tiny arc reactor, is called the "Model T" . The T, of course, stands for 'Tony'.

It's actually a really interesting challenge, designing high-tech, high-concept toys for the various genders, fetishes, and preferences. There's also a surprising amount of crossover with weapons manufacturing, though with fewer explosions.

At least that _will_ be the case, once he fixes the last of those pesky design flaws.

"Did you see Bruce speaking with anyone before he came down here?" he asks JARVIS.

"In the hallway upstairs, Dr. Banner was speaking with his AI counterpart." Is Tony imagining things, or is there a hint of something — jealousy maybe, or disapproval — in JARVIS' voice?

On a whim, Tony asks, "Hey JARVIS?"

"Yes, Master Stark?"

"Have you spoken with 3ruce, at all?"

There's a longer pause than usual from the house AI. "Yes, Master Stark. We have interacted on a limited basis."

"What do you think of him?"

"I'm afraid I do not understand the question."

"I mean, is he... You're both AIs, don't you have anything in common? You're sort of brothers, really, except no you're not because that would make me 3ruce's father, and, no, just no. Ugh. Forget I said that. Yuck."

"Ah. I believe I understand what you are asking."

"Really?"

"Yes, Master Stark. You wish to know whether I feel a kinship with the android because we are both AI programs. Furthermore, you wish to ascertain by my answer whether I am 'angry' with you over your prior treatment of 3ruce, like many of your associates have been."

"Jesus," Tony says. JARVIS may not be a truly conscious AI, but his ability to understand Tony sometimes approaches the uncanny. "Okay, yeah, that's... that's about it, actually. Good job. So... do you?"

"3ruce has a very different sort of mind from mine, as you should well know, sir.  We might as well belong to different species." JARVIS sounds mildly disapproving, and Tony wonders, not for the first time, why he ever programmed that tone in. "Master 3ruce has a 'personality' and an emergent self-concept, whereas I have neither of those things. Additionally he has a much greater capacity to change. His programming is designed to evolve over time, based on external stimuli; mine is not."

"Do you regret that, though? Do you wish that you were more like 3ruce?"

"I act according to my function, sir. I do not believe that I require further modifications to perform my current job at the highest possible level of efficiency."

"But, I mean... Do you actually _like_ your job, JARVIS? Do you do a good job because you _want_ to, or just because you were programmed to?"

There's a long silence from the AI.

"I do not understand the question, Master Stark. These concepts of 'liking' and 'disliking', 'wanting' and 'not wanting', are not included in my decision-making matrices.  I know that you are already aware of this fact, sir."

"Right, right, of course." Tony nods. "Nevermind all of that, forget I said anything. You're doing a great job, just... just keep it up, okay? Cheers. Oh... I guess you should send Bruce in."  He's secretly been hoping that Bruce might give up and go away if he keeps him waiting, but that doesn't seem to be likely at this point. The scientist is still standing there, arms crossed, patiently waiting for Tony to respond.

"As you wish, Master Stark."

The door swished open and Bruce steps inside, looking around at Tony's lab. Of course, of _course_ , his eyes go immediately to the spilled glass, and the puddle of scotch slowly spreading across the floor. He frowns, that little concerned frown.

_Damn that frown to hell,_ Tony thinks. 

The look on Bruce's face reminds Tony of the day he first brought 3ruce to life, when he stepped on the tumbler and fell, and 3ruce unplugged himself and canceled his own installation to come and fuss over Tony. It reminds him of Bruce bringing him water and Tylenol, and asking him for a favor that Tony could not perform.

Tony silently curses at both men for being so goddamn _kind_.

"Your lab is much dirtier than I expected," Bruce offers, in that slow, precise way of speaking that he sometimes has.

Tony cringes. "I'm not drunk," he says, and then feels like he could kick himself.

"I didn't say that you were drunk." Bruce looks at him curiously. "I've seen you drunk. This is barely getting started, for you."

Tony really can't decide how he feels about that statement.

Bruce continues to stare at him, that familiar dark-eyed stare, and Tony decides that it's better to bite the bullet. He takes a deep breath, and steels himself against it.  "I already said I'm sorry," he begins, "but I'll say it again if you want me to." He lets his breath out. "I'm sorry. I —"

Bruce holds up a hand to stop him. "I know that. You don't have to."

Tony bites his lip, and makes himself meet Bruce's eyes. Bruce continues, "Before, I told you that I wasn't ready to forgive you, and I told you to ask me again later. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately, about you, and now I'm here to call you on it." He nods. "So go ahead.  Ask me."

"Oh, ah... right. Right! Well, um..." Tony is never tongue-tied like this. He kind of wants to sink into that puddle of scotch, and let himself dissolve.

_And how pathetic are we today? Jesus._

"Dr. Banner," he says, falling back on an awkward sort of formality, "will you please accept my apology for using your personal data and your likeness without your permission, for creating an artificial being based on you for my own... personal... purposes..." he chokes a little, but forces himself to continue, "and for lying to you to cover it up? And will you forgive me? For all of those things? With the understanding that I will never do anything like it, ever again?"

"Yes," Bruce says, just that one short word, and then he smiles at Tony.

Tony smiles back, automatically, and then Bruce's words sink in. "Yes?" he echoes back. "Really? Why?"

Bruce smiles again. "Yes, really. Why? Well... I didn't believe that you were sincere at first, in your apology. But 3ruce has convinced me otherwise. And he's right — you did do the right thing, after all, and I do think that you've learned some kind of lesson. I'm over it now." His smile fades. "Besides, clinging to anger is kind of... Well. You know. It's a thing that I'm always trying to do less."

"Wow. Wow," Tony says, kind of inanely.

"But that's not the main reason I came down here," Bruce continues.

"Oh?"

 _Oh,_ Tony thinks. Of course Bruce needs something else, of _course_ he does.

"What can I do you for?" he asks. "Something break down?  Lab equipment need an upgrade? I have some ideas about that harness, by the way, when you get a chance..."

"Hm? Oh, no, nothing like that." Bruce waves a hand, and then he pauses and looks at Tony carefully.

"You do know that you're more than a glorified mechanic to me— to us, right? There are, in fact, reasons that people might want to be around you, aside from needing you to fix something or build something."

"Of course," Tony lies.

He knows full well that his work is the thing that justifies his existence. It's been pointed out to him many times, by many people, that no one would tolerate him if he wasn't brilliant.

Luckily, he _is_ brilliant.

"I actually just wanted to ask you to dinner," Bruce continues.

"That's cool, I can... Wait, dinner? Like, today?"

Bruce looks at his watch. "Well, it's almost dinnertime now, so yeah. I thought we could just go—"

"Okay! Yeah, I'd love to, that's no problem. I can just... I know a place uptown, it's supposed to be really great, all of the newspapers are going to be talking about it in, like, two weeks. Actually it hasn't technically opened yet, but the chef is a friend of mine, he owes me a favor, and I could just have JARVIS call him up and I'm sure he would be happy to open..."

"Tony." Bruce cuts him off midstream. "I'm sure your chef friend has a wonderful place, but I wasn't really looking to do anything fancy."

"Oh... ok. Well, how about —"

" _Tony_. Shut up for a minute and let me tell you what I want to do, okay?"

"Okay, okay." Tony realizes, a bit too late, that he's gone into what Pepper once called his "spend money until everything is perfect" mode.

That tactic works really well on most people, but it never seems to work on Pepper.  Apparently Bruce isn't a fan, either.

"What I want you to do is come outside with me — outside, you know that place? In the open air?" Bruce smirks when Tony wrinkles up his nose in exaggerated disgust, so Tony marks that as a win, despite the implied mockery.  

Bruce continues, "I want you to put on some sunglasses and a hat, so that people don't bother you, and walk with me to that new little diner that just opened, down the block. And I want you to sit on a bench and have dinner with me, and talk, and eat what may turn out to be a very mediocre meatloaf."

"Ew."

"Well, you can get whatever you want. I'm trying the meatloaf. Is that a yes?"

"Yes," Tony says, and goes to find a hat.

\-----

When they leave, Bruce holds the door for Tony, even though all of Tony's doors are sensor-driven.

\-----

The sky is very blue, and there's a pleasant, gentle breeze. It's actually a lovely day.

_Who knew?_

They're meandering down the sidewalk, walking neither slow nor fast, when Bruce drops his next bombshell.

"I love him, you know."  Bruce looks sideways at him, and Tony feels his heart drop from his chest and land somewhere in the piping below 5th Avenue.

"What.. who? Clint?"

He's not sure why his mind goes there; maybe it's because of the fierce protectiveness that the archer has consistently showed toward his friend, lately. Tony supposes he might love someone who cared about him like that, too.

Bruce makes a choking sound, and Tony realizes that he's laughing.  "Clint," he chokes out. "Ahaha, good one. As if Coulson would let me get away with that." Bruce wipes a tear of mirth from his eye, then cracks up again.

Tony doesn't understand why Coulson suddenly gets to have a say in the Avengers' love lives, but he decides to let that one slide.  Coulson is always sticking his nose in where it doesn't belong, anyway.

"No, you brilliant moron," Bruce continues. "I mean 3ruce, of course."

"Of course," Tony echoes. "You love him. Of course you do. I... guess I can't say that I blame you."

 _Are you legitimately trying to make this awful?_ he thinks. _Is this my punishment? Is that what it is, that I have to listen to you babble about how you love 3ruce all evening, and I can't say anything at all?_

_Well, I deserve that, I suppose._

"How could I not love him?" Bruce continues. "He's just like me, only better."

"Hey, now," Tony says.

"No, really. You did an excellent job." Bruce looks strangely wistful. "You managed to capture everything about me that's worthwhile, that's... worthy, but without all of the anger and the violence. He's everything that's lovable about me, without any of the bad. So of course I love him. How could I not?"

"I love the violence," Tony says, before he thinks.

He takes another few strides in silence, before noticing that Bruce is no longer beside him. He spins around, nearly hitting an old woman, and sees Bruce standing dead still in the middle of the sidewalk. A teenager yells at him to move, but Bruce doesn't respond; he doesn't even spare the cursing child a glance.

"Explain that," he orders.

Tony walks back to him, trying to look confident and smooth and not at all terrified. "I do," he says, honestly. "I said it when we met, that I was a big fan of the whole giant green rage monster thing. You do know that I wasn't actually joking about that, right?"

Bruce just stares at him, like Tony's speaking Klingon. No, strike that; Tony wouldn't be surprised if Bruce spoke fluent Klingon.  

 _Welsh, then,_ he thinks. _Nobody understands Welsh._

"It's impressive," he continues. "More than impressive, it's fucking miraculous, really. Do you have any idea how many times you've saved all of our asses? How many times you've saved _me_ , my own life, personally? Remember when you caught me? Remember when you woke me up?  Jesus, Bruce, we'd be completely overwhelmed without you. You and the Other Guy."

"I mean, yeah, sure, it's a little bit terrifying, a little bit chaotic, but that just makes it hotte— um, more fun. Funner. More interesting. It's fascinating, really, the Other Guy, and how he's both like and not at all like you.  It's a thing that I would study, if I was allowed to."

"And with that, I think I've reached my sincerity quota for the day about," he looks at his watch, "... _now._ So I'm just going to stop talking, okay? Okay. Diner?"  Tony points down the street.  "Let's go before you have to hulk out on some pedestrians, which by the way would be totally justified in my opinion, and I would totally pay for any and all resulting lawsuits. I mean... Um. Shall we?"

By the time he's finished speaking, Tony kind of wants to die.

Bruce hasn't said a word, hasn't reacted at all, throughout this whole tirade. Tony's right on the verge of spinning on his heel and walking away, straight back to Stark Tower, but then Bruce reaches out his hand.

Tony flinches, but Bruce just grabs Tony's hand, clasps it in his own, and carefully weaves their ten fingers together. Tony lets him because he doesn't really know what else to do.

He doesn't exactly hate it, after all.

Bruce clears his throat, opens his mouth, shuts it, and turns his face aside like he doesn't want Tony to see it. Finally he seems to give up on speaking, and just nods toward the diner. He starts walking, abruptly, and Tony is pulled along for a step before he can catch up. Then they're walking down the street hand-in-hand, side-by-side, like a couple of teenagers out on their first date.

Tony doesn't think he's ever held hands with anyone in public before, not even as a child. That's just not a thing that Tony Stark does. But Bruce's hand is soft and strong and warm, and Tony's not quite sure what brought this on but he _is_ sure that he will not be the first one to let go.

He can feel Bruce's body heat, and the solidity of his shoulder as it bumps up against Tony's, and it's comfortable.  It's _right_. It feels like something big and deep has changed between them, in that one moment on the sidewalk. (Which is a lot nicer than what usually happens when Tony runs off at the mouth like that.)

They walk in silence the rest of the way to the diner, but Tony's subconscious is freaking out loudly enough that he doesn't really notice.

\-----

3ruce is waiting for them at the diner. Tony stiffens, instantly suspicious.

"Why is _he_ here?" he points, demanding.

Bruce doesn't respond, just leads him firmly to the table and sits down beside 3ruce. Tony reluctantly slides into the opposite bench. 3ruce smiles at Tony, as he cuddles up against Bruce's side and puts his hand on Bruce's leg.

 _Jesus H. Christ. Could they be any more obvious about the fact that they're fucking?_ Tony thinks, and rolls his eyes.

He wonders what their waitress must think about the couple. He doesn't expect that the gay thing would raise an eyebrow, and with 3ruce's hair brushed down around his face, his data ports are all well-hidden. He looks perfectly human.

What might raise an eyebrow, however, is the fact that he looks like his boyfriend's identical twin.

Tony wonders if the waitress is imagining them together, identical mirror-images of a man. Maybe she's imagining how they might start to kiss one another, and then run their hands over each others' sides and back, and slowly unbutton one another's shirts. (Bruce is wearing the Purple Shirt of Sex today, which is Tony's shameless favorite.) They would strip off their tops, revealing identical, shapely arms and chests, and then they would begin to unzip each other's pants and pull down...

Tony has to stop, then, because at some point there it stopped being about the waitress, and also he's starting to become aroused in the middle of a low-end diner.  (Normally, he makes it a point never to become aroused in anything less than a five-star restaurant.)

He guesses he should look away before he gets caught staring, so he turns his attention to the menu. He has just settled on a bacon club and fries when Bruce says, "So 3ruce and I have talked."

Tony looks up at him. "Yes?"

"Yeah." Bruce looks down at the menu, realizes he's holding it upside down, and turns it over. "I don't normally do things like this, so I don't really know how to best say it, other than plainly.  3ruce and I think that we both want to date you."

Tony's mouth falls open, casts around for something to say, and comes up short. This isn't the last thing that he was expecting; it's not even on the list.

"Yes," 3ruce chimes in. "We've been talking about you a lot, and we realized that we both want to get to know you better. Bruce wants to get to know you better as himself, not as the Other Guy, and I want to get to know you better as... well, as an equal, not as someone who's being compelled to love you." Tony cringes, then perks up, then cringes again. "And we're both really curious about who you are when you're not Iron Man, and not the billionaire genius playboy etcetera."

"In other words," Bruce says, "when you're not playing a part. Who you are, when you're all alone."

Tony shrugs. "I hate to disappoint you, but when I'm all alone, I'm just an engineer. I like computers more than people; I like building things more than socializing; when I'm working I forget to bathe and eat and sleep; and I won't hear you when you're talking, if my mind is on a problem."

"Trust me, there's a reason why I play all of those roles. I'm afraid the 'real me' isn't really worth your time."

Bruce shakes his head, and they both frown their Concerned Frown. "We get like that too, you know," Bruce says. "We understand what it means to go deeply into something. We're not going to judge you, and it's not going to phase us."

"Also, I'm probably an alcoholic.  And to be completely honest, my moral compass is really questionable sometimes," Tony says.

"Ok.  First off, Tony, more than anyone else in the _world_ , Bruce and I already knew that," 3ruce says.  "And, okay, the alcoholism we can work on, because there's no 'probably' about it.  But the rest of it is just... it's just _you_ , Tony.  And that's what we want.  To get to know you better, flaws and all."

Tony stares at him and slowly shakes his head. "Okay. Okay, if you say so."  The strange thing is, he thinks that he might believe them.  

This is part of what he sensed in Bruce, from the beginning — that they were similar, in some deeply fundamental way.

"So, let me get this straight... You" — he points his finger back and forth, across the table — "want to _date_ me. You, both of you, Bruce the giant green rage monster dude, and 3ruce the android that I secretly modeled after the human form of the green rage monster dude, you want to date me. Together. You want to hang out, and spend time together, and, and 'get to know the real me' or whatever."

They both nod, exactly in unison.  Tony leans back his head and laughs, helplessly and loud.

He laughs and laughs, because his life is fucking _hilarious_ , because he is the luckiest guy in the entire goddamn _world_ , because he fucks things up over and over again and somehow always manages to come out ahead, regardless.  Because his life is way better and more awesome than it has any right to be.  

He laughs until tears drip from his eyes, until the waitress is starting to give them a Look and other customers are staring.  Then he leans forward over the table, thinks about every wank fantasy he's ever had that involved twins, and says, "Hell yes."

\-----

The cheeseburger is surprisingly good, and the waitress serves them without too many weird looks. Tony makes himself a mental note to drop by someday soon as Tony Stark, in his public persona, and give the diner a little publicity boost.

The conversation goes surprisingly easy, now that they are apparently dating. 3ruce and Bruce talk about their research, which is apparently moving at a breathtaking pace now that they've combined their efforts. Tony mostly listens, interrupting only to ask the occasional question.  Then he tells them about Genital Electric, and his quest to create "smart" (but not AI-based!) sex toys.

He is quite gratified when 3ruce also finds the name funny, though Bruce just rolls his eyes.

This leads into a discussion of why the two men have different reactions, and what factors in 3ruce's programming might have caused their opinions to diverge. It's incredibly, delightfully technical; Tony had forgotten how much he loves talking with someone who's roughly on the same level, instead of having to dumb things down all of the time.  

It's also surprisingly non-awkward, given the topic.  3ruce seems comfortable with his nature as a constructed being, and with Tony as his creator.  He even offers up some fascinating details about the subjective experience of coming to life for the first time as a fully-grown adult.  

One day, Tony will ask him what it felt like to be turned off.  One day.  He's not brave enough quite yet.

When Tony offers to provide a personal demonstration of his product line at either man's convenience, Bruce blushes and looks down, but 3ruce's eyes light up and he smirks.  Tony is even more curious about the reasons for _that_ difference.

\-----

When they leave, they leave together.

Tony somehow ends up walking in the middle, with 3ruce and Bruce on either side.  At first they just walk side-by-side, but then both Bruce and 3ruce sling their arms around Tony's waist and gather close around him.  Suddenly it's like he's being held up, supported, even though he's not drunk enough to need it.

Not drunk at all, actually; the bit of scotch wore off long ago, and now he's stone-cold sober.  But somehow he still feels warm and happy, relaxed, just like when he's at the perfect point of tipsy.

 _Safe_.

He feels _safe_ like this, with a friend on either side, and Tony marvels at it. Today is just full of ridiculous firsts.

He wonders if this is what 'normal' children feel like with their parents.

The walk back to the Tower is all too short, but the three of them take it as slowly as they can, ignoring the dirty looks from passers-by. Tony lets himself fall, just a little, and be lulled.

Tony's life is so full of hard edges, and always has been; he was practically brought up by machines. He doesn't regret that, exactly; it made him who he is.  But it has led to a life that has very little softness.

Little softness, and no platonic touching. Not from parents, not from lovers, and never from his friends.  Not until now.

He thinks that he could come to stand this.

\-----

At the Tower, they all go up together. At the door to his own private stairway, Tony stops.

"So I don't really date," he says, "except Pepper, but that was different and I fucked it up anyways, and I'm not really sure how this is supposed to go, and I'm sure that you guys are busy, but" — he has to pause to take a breath — "if at any point you should want to, you're welcome to come down and work in my lab. While I work, also, I mean. Or even just hang out, if you want to just hang out.  I can hang out.  Not that I'm trying to distract you or anything, I totally respect you guys' time and I know that you're doing important research, but, you know. If you want to. You're always welcome to come down."

By the end of this spiel, both Bruce and 3ruce have cracked a grin, and 3ruce is obviously trying not to laugh.

"Yes," Bruce says. "Thank you, Tony.  We'd love to."

3ruce finally fights down his mirth, and nods. "I think that right now is a wonderful time." The android smirks. "Maybe you can give us that 'personal demonstration' that you promised." Bruce blushes again.

_Oh, fascinating._

Tony pushes the door open. "After you," he says, and smiles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _this is the story that never ends_   
>  _yes it goes on and on my friend_   
>  _I had to add a new chapter because they wouldn't fuck_   
>  _now I'll be adding new chapters forever just because_   
>  _this is the story that never ends_
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Seriously, this was going to be the last chapter, but then they all started wanting to talk about their feeeeeelings. So now this is the plot-end, but there will be a Porny Coda.
> 
> Also, 'because' and 'fuck' totally do rhyme. Shut up. :P


	7. Porny Coda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Content note:** Here be porn. This chapter contains a 3some (m/m/m), mild D/s, edging/orgasm delay, use of high-tech sex toys, and some sickeningly fluffy schmoop.

3ruce waves his hand in the air over Tony's workbench, where prototypes and testing models of Tony's new line of sex toys are all laid out.. "So what does... hmm... _this_ one do?" His hand settles onto a slender, curving, blunt-tipped wand, but Tony intervenes and quickly snatches the toy away.

"Er, let's not mess with that one," he says. "And also that one, this one, and that one over there..." He quickly gathers up a handful of toys and deposits them in one corner of the workbench. "Those ones aren't quite ready for testing. They still have a few kinks left, and I don't mean that in the fun way."

"Ah," Bruce says. "They explode?"

Tony rolls his eyes. " _Yes_ , okay, they explode. It's no big deal. They just need a few more minor tweaks." Bruce smirks, and then he looks down at Tony's workbench and once again he blushes. 

There's a look on Bruce's face that Tony has never seen, a softer sort of shyness, very different from his typical cool reserve. Tony finds himself intrigued. 

"See something you like?" he asks.

Bruce's hand closes on something curved and slightly bulbous, with a swirling shaft and a rounded, thicker knob at one end. "This one," he says, not quite looking at Tony.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Bruce says, and then he looks up at 3ruce, like he's asking for help.

The android slings an arm around his human counterpart's waist. He leans his head on Bruce's shoulder, and then nips gently at his earlobe. Lips just brushing against the curve of Bruce's ear, he says, "Tell him that thing you told me a couple of days ago. You know the one I mean." Bruce nods, and Tony waits.

Bruce meets his eyes. He opens his mouth and then pauses, as if seeking the right words. Finally, he says, "In my life, I am always in control. Because I have to. I always, always have to be in control, without a moment's rest. Or else things could go really, really wrong, really quickly. Do you understand?" Tony nods, and 3ruce squeezes Bruce's shoulder.

"There is..." He hesitates, starts again. "When I have an opportunity," he says, "to relax, for just a minute. To _not_ be in control. To let someone else do it for a little while, instead." He hesitates again. "It is... I didn't know until recently that that was possible at all. And I have you to thank for discovering it, really." He squeezes 3ruce's hand that's on his shoulder. "Because he showed me."

"I... see," Tony says, and he thinks that he does.

"Great. Then... Why don't you show me?" He hands the toy to Tony. "We can start with this."

"Alright." 

Before he can allow himself to think about it and get scared, Tony takes a decisive step forward. He winds one hand into Bruce's hair and tugs the other man close, pulling him into a firm, deep kiss. Bruce's lips part readily and Tony kisses him hard for a long moment, flicking his tongue over the sensitive, nerve-rich spaces inside Bruce's mouth. The scientist moans a little, and Tony cannot help but smirk.

 _Yup, I've still got it,_ he thinks.

As he kisses Bruce, 3ruce steps around behind the other man and wraps his hands around Bruce's wrists, pulling his arms together behind his back. Bruce goes with it readily, not trying to keep his arms down or resist. 3ruce holds his wrists firmly together, restraining him in a way that can be immediately released. Bruce throws his head back, breathless, closes his eyes, and moans. 

Looking down, Tony can see the outline of Bruce's erection inside his trousers. He leans forward and unbuttons Bruce's shirt, moving as quickly as he can, running his fingertips beneath the fabric as he moves down.

Tony has an idea. He reaches behind himself, searching thorough the contents of his workbench by touch, until he finds the thing he's seeking. Or two things, rather — twin circular discs, each one roughly the size of a dime. 

He picks them up. "We'll get to that toy you picked out," he says, "but there are a few other things that I want to show you first. Now these guys" — he holds up the two little circles, showing them to Bruce and 3ruce — "are for the nipples, see?" He holds one in between two fingers, and playfully licks at Bruce's nipple, which quickly hardens into an erect nub. Bruce gasps; Tony smirks, pleased, and presses the disc against Bruce's nipple. 

Immediately the edges of it curl and contract slightly, gripping against the skin and exerting mild suction. Bruce tosses his head back and makes a grimace. 

"How does that feel?" Tony asks.

"Oh... ooooh," Bruce replies. "It's..." he grits his teeth, "...it's like hot and cold, both at the same time? And a little bit of suction, and just a teeny bit of pressure. It's... oooough!" He writhes. "It's intense, but really" — his back arches helplessly, and he writhes in 3ruce's grasp — "really, really good."

"Awesome," Tony says, and slaps the other one onto Bruce's other nipple. The other man lets out a loud yell, and Tony is (not for the first time) glad that his workshop is sound-proofed. The last thing he needs is a paranoid Hawkeye or Black Widow running to Bruce's rescue, convinced that Tony's cooked up some new plan to hurt their friend.

Far from it.

Tony drags his hands down the sides of Bruce's torso, letting his fingertips catch and pull against the skin. He ends with both of his fists curled against the two soft hollows, right there between the hipbones and the hard line of Bruce's cock.

He presses them in a little, teasing. Like if he moved his left hand just a little to the right...

Bruce moans again, his eyes squeezed shut. His cock twitches helplessly between Tony's hands, weighed down by the fabric of his trousers and unable to rub on either one. "Please," he says, in a throaty voice. "Please." Tony makes quick work of the buttons, and pulls the zipper down. In one motion, he pushes down both Bruce's trousers and the red silk boxers underneath; his now-revealed cock slaps up against Bruce's stomach, eager and happy to be free.

His cock looks very familiar, to Tony.

Tony runs a finger, just one index finger, softly and slowly up the underside of Bruce's shaft. Bruce's moans are louder, less coherent; a pearl of thick liquid gathers at the tip, and Tony watches as it grows too large and spills over the side. He bends down and traces the path with the tip of his tongue, which only causes more liquid to gather in the little indentation.

"Well," he says, pulling away, "you certainly seem to be enjoying those." Bruce nods, a bit frantically. "Excellent," Tony says, affecting a professorial tone. "Like the nipple stimulators, this next thing I'm going to show you responds to changes in the wearer's bloodflow, exerting more pressure as the wearer becomes more aroused." 

He picks up a black ring from the table. It's largish, a soft hoop with a radius of just about five inches. He bends it into a figure-eight, and then he carefully winds the top loop around Bruce's cock, and the bottom loop around his balls. 

When both loops are in place, Tony taps a fingertip against the tiny green button at the base of Bruce's cock. The entire circle begins to shrink, pulling in on itself until it's perfectly snug and nestled tight against the skin. There it stops, restraining Bruce's cock and balls like a small harness.

Tony licks his tongue up and down the shaft again, just to watch the head blush redder. It's proud and fat and heavy, thick with blood and so much wanting. "Now this," he says, "will keep you hard, but stop you from having an orgasm too early. I mean, it would be such a shame, you know, if we never got to try that initial toy that you picked out." Bruce writhes and twists and moans and curses, and despite himself, Tony's heart beats a little faster in his chest. 

He trusts what Bruce says, but still. If his friend (boyfriend?) is wrong, if Bruce has misjudged his own limits, this could end quite badly for them all. 

He looks up at 3ruce, over Bruce's shoulder, and raises his eyebrows. 3ruce seems to get what he is asking; he looks at Bruce's face, whispers something in the human's ear, and then he nods. Nods at Tony, saying that it's okay to go on. 

Tony nods back and smiles, grateful for the android's presence. 

It might be saying something, really, if a weeks-old robot is better at reading people than Tony.

"Now I think that you might be ready for this," Tony says. He picks up the plug and twirls it coyly in the air. "What do you think?"

"Fuck," Bruce gasps. " _Yes_."

"What do you say," 3ruce chides, over his shoulder, "when you want something? What do you say to Tony?"

"Please," Bruce says, curling forward, hips pushing against nothing. His voice hitches. "Please fuck me with it. Please, Tony. God. Fuck my asshole with it. _Please._ "

Tony has never seen Bruce so unrestrained, before — so uncontrolled, unfiltered. Free. It makes him look more beautiful than anything, to Tony. Knowing that Bruce has _this_ within him, deep down, hidden away where no one gets to see it. Except for his twin in mind and body, 3ruce; and now, for Tony. 

He doesn't have the words to say that, yet, so instead he just says, "Here, let's bend him over."

3ruce pushes Bruce forward, guiding him until his knees bump into Tony's workbench and then bending him over it. The android pushes Bruce's arms up, making him lean forward until his lips rest against the worn and well-stained wood.

"Alright," Tony says, and he twists the knob on the end of the toy that causes the surface to become coated with lube. "This one has lube held in a reservoir just beneath the surface, so that you don't need to have a separate bottle of it with you," he says to 3ruce. 

"Oh, I see," 3ruce says. "Like my cock."

"Exactly," Tony says. "It's the same principle, really." Then he trails the slick toy down the crack of Bruce's exposed ass, teasing over the heated skin. When he reaches the small pucker, he slowly but steadily pushes the tip in. 

The shaft of the plug right now is slender, pulled down to its smallest size; it slides in easily enough. Tony goes ahead and seats it fully, not stopping until the flared end is flush against the skin of Bruce's ass. By design, this should ensure that the bulb at the other end is firmly nudged against his prostate. "Now this," Tony says, "also uses a similar idea, but instead of bloodflow it uses your muscle tension." 

Tony presses another knob on the base, and Bruce rocks forward as the toy expands in girth, its shaft pushing outward to fully fill him. It stops when it is pressed against the edges, all around. "So the shaft will grow thicker, as the muscles around it all relax."

"The idea is that it will slowly stretch you, at a speed that is right on the edge of comfortable but without pain, until your asshole is loose enough to receive an average cock. And in the meantime, it also provides some nice prostate stimulation to take the edge off." He smirks. "Or make it worse, I guess. Depending on how you look at it."

Bruce writhes as the toy starts to move and swell within him. He curls forward and then arches back, aroused to incoherence. He moans and gasps and begs, making little cries that aren't quite words. Tony checks, but 3ruce just nods at him again.

"Well, that's basically it," Tony says. "Three of my favorite new toys in action. Exclusive sneak preview." 

He finds himself at a bit of a loss now, after all of that. Obviously Bruce will need to come soon, but Tony's not quite sure how he ought to make that happen. In attention, he himself is starting to ache for some attention. He can feel little drops of sweat gathering, all along his spine.

"I think you're forgetting one thing," 3ruce says. 

"Yeah? What's that?" 

3ruce quirks a finger at him, so Tony follows him around to the other side of the workbench. "Hey, love," 3ruce says in a soft, low voice, running a hand through Bruce's hair. Bruce pushes his head up, arching back into the touch. "I think," 3ruce says to him, "that you want to suck a cock right now. Don't you? Do you want to suck on a nice, thick cock?"

"Yes," Bruce moans. "God, yes."

"Good boy," 3ruce says, caressing his human lover's cheek. Then the android reaches out and, without a word, unzips Tony's trousers. Tony was not expecting that, but naturally his cock leaps into 3ruce's touch. 

How could it not, with a vision like this one all laid out before him?

"Here," 3ruce says, and then he pulls Tony gently forward, just one step, stopping him right where the tip of his cock is warmed by Bruce's breath. Tony swallows heavily, and squeezes his own eyes shut as 3ruce guides him forward into the eager warmth of Bruce's mouth. 

"Fuck," he says, hands closing in Bruce's wavy hair. Trying not to push or tug too hard. "Oh, fuck."

When he's in position, pushing and pulling his shaft slowly in and out of Bruce's mouth, 3ruce moves around behind him. Tony can feel inhumanly-strong hands close around his own hips; they push his own pants and boxers the rest of the way down, until they pool around his ankles. 

3ruce squeezes both of Tony's asscheeks, pushing them roughly apart; Tony forgets himself and bucks forward into Bruce's mouth. The moaning man swallows him down, without apparent difficulty. "Now, you need something, too," 3ruce says, and he slides a lube-covered finger into Tony's ass. It goes in more easily than it would have done two weeks ago. 

"Hmm," 3ruce says. "I see that you're not new to this at all." There's an implied question in 3ruce's statement; and something else. A strange undertone. 

Jealousy?

Tony cannot be completely sure.

"Well," he says, and his voice hitches as 3ruce wiggles his finger inside Tony. "Like every good developer, I've been testing my own products." And that's the truth, and the whole truth; Tony hasn't had a man (or man-shaped being) inside himself in quite awhile.

"Oh, of course you have," 3ruce says, sliding another finger in. He twists them around for a short moment, and then withdraws. But only briefly; a second later, Tony can feel the blunt, broad head of 3ruce's own cock pushing insistently at his entrance. 

For a brief second he feels like saying, "wait". Asking 3ruce to stop for a minute, let him catch his breath. Slow down. 

Make this a bit less overwhelming.

But it seems right, somehow, that it should be like this. Right and necessary, that Tony should have this experience and feel it. Like it's balancing out some kind of cosmic scale. So he stays quiet and just keeps pushing in and out of Bruce's mouth, and tries to trust him.

Trust them.

3ruce shoves into Tony, his dick already lubed and slick; Tony cries out, caught. He cannot move back or forward safely; nowhere is there any reprieve, any respite from the sensations that take over his brain. 3ruce's cock stretches him open, right on the edge of pain; but if he pushes forward, there is the warmth of Bruce's mouth waiting, soft with twisting tongue, to drive him further from his senses. When that becomes too much and he tries to pull away, he only impales himself deeper on 3ruce's cock.

Caught between them, his two men, Tony remains — fucked and fucking steadily, both in front and behind. Identical bodies; mirror images, split into separate motion. 3ruce holds his hips and penetrates him, takes him over; Bruce receives him into his own mouth, and writhes and gasps and moans. Both of them unselfconscious, lost completely in the moment.

Exactly how long they do this for, Tony will never know. 

He feels like he's suspended on the edge of something deep, a giant chasm. One that, should he brave one single foot over the edge, will swallow him alive and never ever let him go.

3ruce curses and pulls his hips back, and drives into him even harder; Bruce sucks until his cheeks hollow, and runs his tongue along the length of Tony's shaft. Tony closes his eyes. 

Steps forward. 

And he falls hard, his vision breaking into whitened pixels, and Tony comes. He comes in waves and pulses, all down Bruce's throat, spilling out over his tongue, splashing against his lips and cheeks and chin. And there's nothing dirty about it, even though it's the filthiest thing ever; there's something to it that is honest. Almost like an innocence. 

There's not one bit of it that feels like winning a competition. Just pure joy. Tony's mind and body are both filled full, yet also blank. 

Crisp and clean, like the first page of a not-yet-scribbled-in notebook.

Tony finishes coming, and then he has to take a moment.

...  
..  
.

.  
..  
...

Tony has had threesomes, of course, and scenes with more people than that. (He once had a serious argument with Pepper over the minimum number of people required to classify something as an orgy. It seemed funny at the time; though not so much now, looking back.) It is true, though, that by random chance Tony has never before had a threesome with two men. 

It turns out this arrangement has much to recommend it.

 _But no,_ Tony thinks. _That alone is not the secret._ If he went out and found two random guys to fuck, no matter how attractive, it still wouldn't be like this. 

It's not just "men"; it's _them_. 3ruce and Bruce. His... 

Lovers?

Or whatever.

Tony, limp and wrung out, drapes himself over Bruce's back, kissing instinctively down the notches of his lover's spine. He's well and truly spent.

3ruce hasn't come, of course not. He probably still can't, like that, unless they've made some alterations. He withdraws from Tony; Tony sobs through a spasm, an aftershock, when the comforting girth of 3ruce's cock pulls out. 

3ruce walks to the side, and appears back behind Bruce, on the other side of the bench. Without much ceremony, he twists the anal plug around, pushing it slightly in and out; it's grown quite large now, stretching Bruce out to a comfortable size. After a bit of fun he pulls it out completely, and Bruce lets out a dismayed sob. 3ruce holds his cock in one fist, lines it up, and unceremoniously pushes in. 

Bruce shudders and twists, and tears spring to his eyes. Tony can tell from looking at him that he's somewhere else entirely, in some other space. High and blissed-out on endorphins; perhaps not totally aware of what's around him.

"How do I —" 3ruce says, and Tony knows what he is asking. He reaches forward, cupping Bruce's cock, and presses something. A small green button, right there at the swollen base. 

The band around Bruce's cock loosens, releasing its tight grasp. As it grows, Tony drags his hand hard along Bruce's cock, trying to reach his fingers all the way around it. The position is awkward — he can't quite make a proper fist — but it doesn't take much, after all of that, to set Bruce off.

3ruce shoves into him hard and Bruce rocks forward, and Tony strokes him once, up and down the shaft, and then Bruce comes. Wave after wave of it spurts out over the back of Tony's hand, and Bruce muffles his wail in the crook of Tony's arm.

Eventually, after many curses and contractions, he also goes limp. As limp as Tony feels, right now. 

The nipple discs detect Bruce's relaxation, and clatter against the top of the workbench as they fall off.

In the silence afterward, all three of them lean there for a moment, like the legs of a tripod. Collapsed against each other, all sweating like they'd just run a marathon. After a few more breaths, Tony recovers enough to push himself shakily back up to his feet. There's one more piece of business to take care of.

"What about you?" he says, to 3ruce. "I mean, you've given us both something. Something really good. But what would _you_ like us to do?" 

3ruce doesn't say anything, and he takes such a long time waiting that Tony starts to get a little scared. He can't even say why, not really. But finally 3ruce looks up at him and says, "It's not..." 

He trails off, tries again. Waves at Tony and Bruce, where they lay leaning on each other. "It's not this, what we just did. That's not quite it. I mean," he hastily adds, "if you want to give me this, that's fine. But it's not really..."

Tony takes 3ruce's hand, and winds the android's fingers with his own. "No," he says. "What is it, really? And I mean _really_ really. Ignore us, for just a minute. What is it for you?"

3ruce waves his hands, frustrated, like he can't find the right phrase. "It's not..." he starts again. "...I mean, I've had a lot of this. You know. And I just, I sort of want..."

"Yes?" Tony says. 

Bruce must be a little bit recovered, by then, because he lifts one hand from where they were still obediently crossed behind his back, and gropes around for 3ruce. "You can tell us," he says, in a hoarse and sexy gravelled voice, clasping the android's hand. "Please."

"I just want," 3ruce says. "I just want to be touched. By both of you, all over, but in a way that's not exactly about sex." He grimaces. "I don't really know how I can say it."

"Oh," Tony says, "I think I see. You want to cuddle."

"I... Yes?" 3ruce says. "Maybe? I don't know."

"Come here," Tony says, and shakes off his fatigue. It's his time to take control, he senses. It's only fair, since 3ruce has done so much already. "Both of you, come here." 

Bruce pushes himself off the workbench, and finds his balance on trembling, weakened legs. There's a sticky wet splotch right in the middle of his workbench, and Tony isn't even mad. Far from it. "Come here," he says again, and half-drags, half-pushes Bruce and 3ruce over to the ratty old couch along the far wall of his lab. 

It's not a couch that would ever appear in Stark Tower, not in a million years; but down here in his lab, it's just Tony. So that's okay.

"I love you," he says, and he doesn't know quite why he says it. Had no intention of doing so, before the words came out. The endorphins must be loosening his tongue, making him go a little mad. "I love you." Once for each of them, hands on the smalls of both their backs, guiding them over to the couch. 

His couch. 

His couch, in his lab. His most precious, private space, which he's never really shared with anyone, before. But it's okay, because he loves them, and now that it's been said he can't go back. 

He doesn't really want to.

They collapse down on the couch, the three of them all in a heap, tangled limbs and stroking fingers, with 3ruce cradled in between. Tony wraps his arms around the android, and after a second, Bruce does the same. They both run their hands over 3ruce — chest, belly, shoulders, neck, and thighs.

"Like this?" Tony asks. "Is that like what you want?"

"Oh, yes," 3ruce says. "God, yes. Just like that." And he's not hard at all now, but that doesn't seem to matter. Not as much as being held between them, being loved. Tony leans in and brushes his lips against 3ruce's cheek, relieved. 

His instincts, just this once, seem to be doing pretty well. 

3ruce gives a contented sigh, kissing Tony and then Bruce; his face smooths and relaxes, losing lines that Tony hadn't even realized he had. "Perfect," he murmurs, laying his head on Bruce's shoulder. 

"Perfect," Tony echoes softly.

He cuddles 3ruce, and does his best to cuddle Bruce through him, and for a moment it feels like a distant echo of an old and rather awful situation. But it isn't, really, is it? Because he can reach out and touch Bruce's shoulder (his hair, his cheek, his chest, his cock) anytime that Tony wants. So he does, and Bruce and Tony's hands clasp together behind 3ruce's neck. 

And then it's just all of them, with hardly any separation. All holding one another barely upright on the couch; all cheerfully ignoring the fact that they're sticky with each other's sweat. And other fluids.

No one minds it very much. 

After awhile, even though it's still quite early, Tony drifts off into sleep. He starts to dream; his dreams are colorful, and filled with warmth. 

And not a single one, on this night, turns into a nightmare.

THE END.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god, I finished. Barely. Apologies for the _extremely_ long delay. (In my defense, I wrote a novel, and also some [silly nonsense](http://archiveofourown.org/works/576101), in the interim.)
> 
> Happy New Year to you all!


End file.
